minimum spec for new pc

[mattfc]

Have to agree on the advice not to buy HP laptops. My wife used to be HP loyal. After the 3rd HP laptop that only lasted less than 2 years she woke up.

With HP.. I think it all depends on which range you pick. I have had HP laptops (8740w at the moment) without any issue, they are close to the best built available.. but.. and a big but I am talking about their Elitebook range (which is made for large corporate). We have 10 of thousands of HP laptops at work and the normal lifespan before asset refresh is about 4 years. I know of the odd issue, but windows related problems outweigh hardware related by orders of magnitude

 

[GreenGA]

windows related problems outweigh hardware related by orders of magnitude

Of this I concur, whole heartedly.

 

[jmbfestool]

Ill try and help you out a little more Alan!     

I have 4 Laptops next to me right now a perfectly good PC up in the loft which I built my self! 

Non of them have been switched on since I got this Imac and Ipad! 

I have posted on Fog when I got my Imac im sure youll remember so youll know how long ago it was.

I hope this helps to spend your money!  Honestly though!  You wont regret an Imac!!

JMB

 

[Alan m]

looks like i need a loan. im a bit skint after the little giant pro3 series and a walko 3 pro and a blast of tiling gear. i could scrap 500 togehter but 1500 would be a stretch too far.

 

[ajones]

Alan where did you get the walko from and what do you think of it?

 

[RC]

With HP.. I think it all depends on which range you pick. I have had HP laptops (8740w at the moment) without any issue, they are close to the best built available.. but.. and a big but I am talking about their Elitebook range (which is made for large corporate). We have 10 of thousands of HP laptops at work and the normal lifespan before asset refresh is about 4 years. I know of the odd issue, but windows related problems outweigh hardware related by orders of magnitude

I guess I'm a bit novice with regards to computing work history, but I have been working in ICT for a good 15 years from tech support to Unix sysadm and eventually security architect in the Telco world and subsequently moved on to internal audit.  [cool]

We have 'only' about a thousand HP & Dell laptops of the Elitebook range on HP and Latitude E-series ones and we have a lease time of 12 months during which a good 5-10% of the machines experience either hard drive failure (like mine did last week @ 6 moths) or motherboard related issues that usually result in either full motherboard replacement or even whole recall & replacement. Of course here the mass also will cause statistical failures to appear vs. my personal experiences with the three Mac's (MacbookPro, iMac & MacMini) I run at home that have worked a lot longer than any Wintel PC counterpart I've ever used.

My wife's still happy with her MBP from 4 years ago (maxed out memory helps here) only technical casualty up to now has been the first battery came to it's end after about three years of constant use which is above average compared to my work HP's and Dells batteries. Absolutely no problems with either my daughter's iMac or my MacMini.

The trick in getting best value out of a Mac is to get one the day a new refresh model is released by Apple because then the Mac is usually built of the top-of-the-line parts and actually is quite well in price parity with any PC built with the same components. Because Apple does not discount it's products during the product cycle the current day value of the model will decrease steadily until it is replaced by the next model while the price stays the same.

This works just like with high-end digital SLR cameras - get one when it's new and get the usage out of it for the maximum time before a newer model comes out and flog the previous model off and upgrade to the next new model for a reasonable premium over what you got for the old one.

Funny when you think of it - all high-end DSLR's, quality lenses (think Canon L-series), Macs & Festool tools seem to hold their value very well in their respective gadget categories and when flogged off at the end of the warranty period/product cycle and replaced by a new similar one you get away with a reasonable upgrade price and are covered by a warranty all the time.  [tongue]

 

[Steve R]

I started out on computers when the keyboard was a card punch terminal.

A percent of all products produced fail. So....all brands fail get over it.

I don't like dell...as a company I work for bought them and everyone came setup different in every batch we bought that were suppose to identical. But I know other that had nothing but Great luck With them.

Some people don't like HP...but I'm typing this on a 8 year old HP laptop with 1T of hard drive and it is running two monitors at hi res as I look at and it rocks!

Years back I converted Best Buy to digital production in the advertising  area....  Mac could not keep up with what our custom built PCs could do.

Macs are fine for many things...but the are not the holy grail nor is a PC. What a Mac does it will go great...but don't take it out of its boundaries or it will fold quicker than a Methodist Minster playing poker with the boys.

Don't buy cheap is the best answer. Buy the top of line and it will last far longer than the bottom or mid range.

First define what you want it to do. Then work back to what product fits you needs best....

Second don't listen to us.... Make up your own mind.

Cheers,
Steve

 

[Kev]

Get an iPad with you're 500 and wait till you a e a little more.

[big grin]

You'll be able tp play Angry Birds and post on FOG.

 

[Trumpet]

Big fan of the Dell Precision laptops, they are big and heavy but good spec with very rugged cases, hinges etc, deigned for CAD, graphics and as desktop replacement. As has been mentioned top of the range machines in any class sometimes make the best deals. I picked up another precision, second hand for 150 UK pounds, cheap for a of a lot computing power = always a bt of a risk second hand but there are bargains to be had. They are more "luggable" and desktop replacement type machines, wouldn't want to hand/shoulder carry miine everywhere so roll it around everywhere in a wheeled case. Macs are great and love the iPad (another second had pruchase that was too good to turndown) but the flexibility and range of software for the PC means I'd probably never switch camps completely.

 

[pugilato]

My father always told me that you pay twice for cheap things... you pay for it the first time, and then again when you buy the one you should have bought in the first place.  If you look around in apple.com, there is a section that sells used equipment (look in the lower left side of apple.com, a section titled Special Deals).

I have a MacBook which has served me well for five years. I have noticed limitations only when working on complex models in sketchup (I'm designing my house), but there are ways around that.

 

[Alan m]

Alan where did you get the walko from and what do you think of it?

i got the walko from wood workers worshop.
roger (owner i think) imports them . i got the last pro 3 and he has no 4s. he says he isnt planing on getting anymore as he is retiring in 6 months time.

i find it a great job on site. plonk the chop saw on top of the a frame way and work away ,fold it out to cut sheets up, move the tables up and down.
i havent used it on its side yet . it is strong and sturdy. a great bench for site use as you can use it in many different ways. the up against the wall is very handy inside .
the only thing i dont like is that the folded out cutting position is on the ground. its ok for a few sheets but if i was doing a lot i would bring some tressels to lift it up  but thats a small price to pay for the convenience of having it .

it will be one of my deffinetly 5 in the van tools ( walko, little giant ladder, multi master, cordless drill systainer, ts55)

would an i pad be a replacement for a laptop for web searching, a bit of excel (or equvelent) for job quotes etc, looking a job pics,
i dont use my laptop for much else

 

[woodguy7]

I would say an Ipad2 would be perfect for what you describe as long as you get the 3G.  I honestly use mine all the time, even at home.  The wife hates it though, it's never out my hands  [embarassed]

 

[Alan m]

does it need one of those pay as you go wifi things or can you use it off of the house wifi etc. i presume it doesnt need wifi for most of things it does , only for some apps and the net

 

[Kev]

does it need one of those pay as you go wifi things or can you use it off of the house wifi etc. i presume it doesnt need wifi for most of things it does , only for some apps and the net

Home wifi is fine.

You can get a wifi only model - but a wifi+3G model is a lt more flexible. Pay as you go 3G is cost effective for out and about use.

The iPad is my go to device these days.

 

[jmbfestool]

I got the 64gb with wifi+3G

I have only used 3rd of the memory and I have never used the 3G on it.

I'm using it now to type this message in bed  [big grin]

Jmb

 

[mattfc]

With HP.. I think it all depends on which range you pick. I have had HP laptops (8740w at the moment) without any issue, they are close to the best built available.. but.. and a big but I am talking about their Elitebook range (which is made for large corporate). We have 10 of thousands of HP laptops at work and the normal lifespan before asset refresh is about 4 years. I know of the odd issue, but windows related problems outweigh hardware related by orders of magnitude

I guess I'm a bit novice with regards to computing work history, but I have been working in ICT for a good 15 years from tech support to Unix sysadm and eventually security architect in the Telco world and subsequently moved on to internal audit.  [cool]

We have 'only' about a thousand HP & Dell laptops of the Elitebook range on HP and Latitude E-series ones and we have a lease time of 12 months during which a good 5-10% of the machines experience either hard drive failure (like mine did last week @ 6 moths) or motherboard related issues that usually result in either full motherboard replacement or even whole recall & replacement. Of course here the mass also will cause statistical failures to appear vs. my personal experiences with the three Mac's (MacbookPro, iMac & MacMini) I run at home that have worked a lot longer than any Wintel PC counterpart I've ever used.

My wife's still happy with her MBP from 4 years ago (maxed out memory helps here) only technical casualty up to now has been the first battery came to it's end after about three years of constant use which is above average compared to my work HP's and Dells batteries. Absolutely no problems with either my daughter's iMac or my MacMini.

The trick in getting best value out of a Mac is to get one the day a new refresh model is released by Apple because then the Mac is usually built of the top-of-the-line parts and actually is quite well in price parity with any PC built with the same components. Because Apple does not discount it's products during the product cycle the current day value of the model will decrease steadily until it is replaced by the next model while the price stays the same.

This works just like with high-end digital SLR cameras - get one when it's new and get the usage out of it for the maximum time before a newer model comes out and flog the previous model off and upgrade to the next new model for a reasonable premium over what you got for the old one.

Funny when you think of it - all high-end DSLR's, quality lenses (think Canon L-series), Macs & Festool tools seem to hold their value very well in their respective gadget categories and when flogged off at the end of the warranty period/product cycle and replaced by a new similar one you get away with a reasonable upgrade price and are covered by a warranty all the time.  [tongue]

Come to think of it I do remember a bad batch of HDs that came with the HP's.. think they were Fujitsu. For our regular travellers we just skip the chances of an HDD failure due to all the bumps and knocks, airport security aren't too gentle either an skip straight to SSD drives.

There seem to be quite a few Apple fan boys on here, and in the interests of disclosure in my household I have an iPad2, couple of iPhone4's few iPods and they are great but they don't come without their faults. I have had 2 replacement iPads due to a duff batch which had dodgy wifi chips.. that took hours and hours of arguing as the wifi would drop off all the time.. my iPhones where fine (e.g. not likely to be software related). I have had an iPhone 4 screen crack when they had just been released (dropped 2ft onto a wooden floor).. again lots or arguing, luckily I printed one of their adverts talking about using the same glass as on helicopter cockpits and said I would raise it as a trade misdescriptions issue if they didn’t replace (turns out they shipped a whole load that they were so keen to get out the door the laminations hadn’t fully cured).

What I am trying to say is that the grass may look greener on the other side, but it isn’t always, seems all a bit hit and miss, very model/component dependant. I have built lots of PCs and it always pays to wait for a couple of rev’s on the motherboards/BIOS. I have an ASUS board going strong after 5 years, and another one replaced 2, I have had server grade HDD die and consumer ones that have been fine, I have had an Advent computer that is going without issue after 4 years.
Problems do occur so what I have learnt is to plan for them.

1) Make sure your data is stored somewhere secure and safe and backed up (all mine in on a RAID 5 NAS) so that whatever happens to your devices, you can restore quickly. You should do this regardless of whether you are windows or apple based

2) Know your consumer rights. Often in the UK at least you can get better protection paying by credit card and buying online due to distance selling regs.. but you should read about them. I have been fobbed off many times, sometimes you have to read the riot act. Take apple products to an Apple store, they seem much more willing to resolve issues that the resellers

3) Make sure you do a bit of research about the customer service of the vendor. A great product with bad service is as bad as a bad product. Am preaching to the converted on that in this forum!

 

[mattfc]

I got the 64gb with wifi+3G
I have only used 3rd of the memory and I have never used the 3G on it.
I'm using it now to type this message in bed  [big grin]
Jmb

Why am I not surprised you got the best

On a more serious note, its easy to end up spending quite a lot on 3G contracts across devices, so worth looking at getting one good 3G contract and a device that supports tethering. I have a wifi iPad and swtich on tethering on my iPhone. The iPhone acts as a wifi hotspot, and I can use my iPad plus laptop at the same time, basically using the phone as a wifi attached modem

 

[Kev]

When you use multiple Apple products in unison, the sum of the parts exceed ...

Look where things will go with iCloud ... seamless access to your docs from iPhone, iPad, iMac, MacBook, etc ... yes it's still maturing and mobile me was a bit dodgy.

People will say ... but you can use cloud files product "x", sharing product "y", etc - but again, I'll draw it back to the principles of why we value Festool - they think outside the value of the single item you're investing in.

It's easy to knock Apple - some people get their jollies out of it ... the fact is Apple computers aren't anything mind blowing inside ... you can take a MacBook and load Windows on it natively if you want - you can also load OS X on pretty much any modern Intel PC if you have half a clue! But regardless, they are generally very well made.

You hear lots of stories about iPhones failing, iPads breaking/failing - but most issues get resolved. Also worth noting, more than quite a few have been sold.

Apple products are designed to deliver a high quality user experience to a broad range of users. They are not designed to solve everyone's problems or meet everyone's specific desires.

There's a premium to be paid for what Apple offer's - all people have to do is make their own choice. This too probably rings a bell !

There's nothing wrong with generic PC's - they are what they are. In fact some specific requirements can dictate a PC ... or at least demand a Windows or Linux OS variant running on some form of virtualisation.

 

[mattfc]

When you use multiple Apple products in unison, the sum of the parts exceed ...

Look where things will go with iCloud ... seamless access to your docs from iPhone, iPad, iMac, MacBook, etc ... yes it's still maturing and mobile me was a bit dodgy.

Agreed, Apple is more than singular products, its a whole eco-system and if one buys into it as a whole, it probably provides one of the most seamless experiences available at the moment.. that said there is a certain amount of control that you loose which may not suit everyone/people may not fell comfortable.

I use Apple for consumer/entertainment, for business other platforms to ensure control of data an ensure abstraction from any specific vendor, jurisdiction etc

 

[RC]

I totally aggree with Mattfc's point that no single make is a silver bullet or safe haven to all. We're stuck with supporting Windows workstations at work because people find Unix workstation too hard to use and Macs lack enterprise management features available out of the box on Windows. That said, we are working hard at finding a reasonable balance to deploy iOS devices securely in a corporate setting and finding it somewhat possible.

On the note about backing up your data I can highly recommend a workstation master data -> network attached storage device synchronization setup be it a Mac + TimeMachine + TimeCapsule or Windows + GoodSync + a SMB NAS server. I do this with all computers at home - Macs backup automaticly to a TimeCapsule and Unix/Windows boxes sync to a Raid-6 fileserver.

iPads are great for consuming information like reading this forum, your emails, watching YouTube, etc. but I would seriously reconsider if planning to have one as a device on which you intend to create anything. I've done some presentations in Keynote on my iPad to prove the point that is can be done, but I also got cramps trying to get evertying just so on that touch screen without any tactile response.

As for the ecosystem idea it is a reality that iOS devices (iPhone, iPad) just work better with a Mac than a PC especially if you are comfortable to upload your private information into a US based clouds like iCloud or Dropbox. I don't use iCloud for privacy reasons, but for me its a work related tendency more than anything else.

At home I've began leaning towards Apple products mainly from a laziness point of view since I provide computers and support for almost a dozen family members (mom, dad, wife, daughter, aunts, cousins, etc.) and have found after years of trying to teach them to use Windows and Linux that with slapping a Mac on their table and saying 'Just click ok whenever it tells you that there are new updates' has worked wonders. I spend a fraction of my free time on handholding nowadays and get to hang around FOG instead ;-)

I personally have an aversion to all closed systems - both Mac and Windows. I use open source operating systems for my home automation systems ranging from OpenBSD to Mint, but I would never suggest one of them for anyone without a degree in computer science anymore.