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[Floydoid]

Or like I did with this PC, I bought a 2yo-ish tower second-hand (which looked like it had hardly been used) very reasonably and I've beefed it up no end.  Cost me about £300 in total - 2 GHz Athlon system.

[UncleUB]

Thinking about costs and how things computer wise have come down,I found an old invoice for my first pc from 1995.It was from a company called Dan Technology.(quite big at the time).The spec was as follows.
Win95
Pentium 75
8MB Ram
850MB hard drive
quad speed cd drive
1MB graphics card
3.5 floppy drive
15" monitor
Cherry keyboard
microsoft mouse

and the cost...........................................£1408.00 inc vat & Del.!!!!!!!!!!!

ps.an extra 8mb ram was £200.

[tuftedduck]

Thanks all, for the tips and comments............lots of good ideas for my project in the summer.

Gosh, UnkyUB, some outlay for what in current terms was a modest machine. Costs have certainly fallen since then.

My original question arose as the man who did my rebuild is newly arrived in the area, and as such had no local "reputation" to be judged by,  and whilst I could not fault his workmanship, I was just curious as to his costs. From what has been said above, his costs are ok, and that gives me the confidence to return to him if problems arise in the future.

Thanks again, one and all.

[UncleUB]

Thats right tufted,if your happy then recommend him to other people.That way he will build up his business and you will always have someone reliable and competent.When i was working as a joiner once you did a good job for someone at a reasonable cost they always came back to you.

[tuftedduck]

I'm back (please stop sighing )

Since the rebuild of my machine as above, my internet connection, download speeds, e-mail retrieval etc all seem very much faster.

Is this possible ? I'm thinking along the lines that as I connect with a Speedtouch 330 usb modem, my new faster processor and faster ram are processing the data coming through the usb port at a much quicker rate, and thus giving the illusion of a faster internet connection.

Is this a silly idea ? Has Virgin.net dsl speeding things up ? Have I just hit a period of fast connections ?

Not complaining, this forum now opens in less than a second instead of the ten to fifteen seconds that it was taking last week 

Any comments most welcome.

[oldfogy]

To be honest it's probably a combination of all the points you mention above.
Plus you could also be hitting a quite period with people getting ready to go home from work etc.

I am also assuming that your new processor and memory are bigger than your previous ones.

[UncleUB]

Tufted,what processor/how much ram did your old machine have?Putting a good bit of more ram will make things better.

[tuftedduck]

Hi guys, and thanks for the responses.

Previously I had 1 Gb ddr1 ram and a 2 Ghz single core processor, now I have 2 Gb ddr2 ram and a 2.3Ghz dual core processor.

I did expect an overall faster machine, and I do have that ok, but I am astonished at how my dsl connection seems to have speeded up also and just wondered if the faster machine could have that effect or if some external factor had improved somewhere along the line.

I'll enjoy it for as long as it lasts.

[Floydoid]

That should be a lot nippier.

[oldfogy]

What you need to remember is that each time you open a web page ALL of that information is download onto your computer into the temp folder before the page actually opens and is displayed on screen.

1. If the page/s concerned still has that info from your last visit, then it only needs to update any changes.
2. If the temp folder has either been emptied or does not hold that info it has to download it over again.

Possibly in the past although you had a fairly good processor "1x2.0 GHz" it may have been taking longer to process and store all of the information, whereas your "2x2.3 GHz" processor can manage the same task a lot quicker.

With my first second PC, I could type and then sit back and watch the text being formatted on screen, and no, I am not a fast typist. (one and a bit finger jobby) Now that was slow. 

But can you type any quicker. 

Warning - while you were typing a new reply has been posted. You may wish to review your post.

[tuftedduck]

Nippier indeed, floydoid, and I am enjoying that...........especially as my Photoshop CS2 is now a different beast, a pleasure to work with without the going to make the coffee whilst waiting for it to do  it's thing.

Thanks OF, I now understand a bit more of the processes from you  clear explanation.

My typing is  two fingers and always going back to sort out the typos   

[oldfogy]

Just going slightly off topic for a moment.

This may also help to explain to people and help them understand why, when on a fixed download limit per month and who have their settings set to remove temp files when closing their browser reach their limit in what seems like a short period of time.

[Floydoid]

I clear my browser cache once a week when I run Ccleaner, and notice the difference till the cache builds up again.

[oldfogy]

I clear my browser cache once a week when I run Ccleaner, and notice the difference till the cache builds up again.

Don't forget you can also change the default time and amount that the temp files are stored for.
Mine is set for only 10 days, therefore any site I may visit either only once or very infrequently gets automatically removed, therefor leaving frequently visited sites untouched and ready for access without having to be downloaded again.

On my new Vista PC the default temp file was/is set at only 50 MB.
I have also read on many occasions of people recommending between 50 - 100 MB only.
XPs default is pre-set ridiculously high.

Should you want to check your settings, go to Internet Options in Control Panel.
Or from here, on the menu bar above select Tools > Internet Options > Settings.

[Floydoid]

Yeah well, I use XP and Firefox.