Desktop pc's

Bazza · June 2007

Hi all, as some of you may remember I had a virus called 'MBS' it's an internet billing service but it's a con/scam, if anyone has been affected or infected with this try 'prevx' it worked for me, although my borrowed laptop is running real slow now!

Right I am after a good desktop computer with a 19" tft screen, as high spec as poss for around the 600 mark (pound sign don't work!), tv tuner, huge ram, big-ish harddrive etc, the works, any reccomendations?

Also any tips on how to speed up my machine, I have done the usual defrag an disk clean up etc...

Many thanks.

RIDE IT LIKE YOU STOLE IT!!

Carrera Fury 06

http://www.flickr.com/photos/wa_wa_weewa/ - New pics added...

Boscherwmb · June 2007

I would suggest getting Spybot to remove spyware, a decent antivirus and also maybe a fresh windows installation. Make sure you have at least 15% free on your windows hdd else because of the page file it will be very very slow.

Unknown · June 2007

Right, as for the speeding up it sounds like your laptop if full of all kinds of ****e, it might be best to wipe the HDD and start a fresh. To do this you will have been given a bootup disk with the laptop containing an OS. (remember to back up the stuff you actually want)
The defrag will just have moved the related files nearer to each other to speed up access times between the files. This makes a bigger impact the less files you have. IIRC files are stored on HDD's using indexed sequential, which means that it will jump to the necessary section and then search through each file, if there are hundreds of files in a section then it will still take a while. (sorry for droaning on)

As for the desktop, I ahve just bought a Dell Desktop. 19"TFT monitor, Windows Vista Home Premium, 320gb HDD, 256mb graphics card with Digi output, DVD RW, 2056mb DDR2 ram, 1.86mhz AMD dual 2 core processor for œ470. The reason I got it so cheap was because I ordered it through my unles business and Dell give a considerable discount to businesses in the hope they will buy more.
Do you own your own business? Or are you friendly with somebody who does? Your best bet would be to ring Dell on behalf of a business and get them to give you a price.

As for the TV, you could get this on your Laptop. I bought a WandTV USB stick, it has an ariel with it or you could just put the portable one that comes with it in.
Then download windows media centre, run through the setup to the TV. There you have it, TV on your computer.

Hope this helps.

<center>Louise</center>
<center>Parktools Sheldon Brown</center>

BoingBoing · June 2007

I use;

Windows advanced care
Adaware
Spybot
Antivir
Sygate Personal Firewall

to keep the nasties at bay. They are all available to download for free from places like tucows, cnet etc and should help keep things ticking over. Worth a look before picking up a shiny new desktop.


<hr noshade size="1">
GT Avalanche 2.0 Disc 07::::Think::::Laugh::::Myspace

jsmity · June 2007

Get a mac..... no virus or trojan horse problems...... they just work!!!!

and they look good too.

I've been using macs for 3 years now, never crashed.

here's one to look at

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Apple-iMac-1-8Ghz-G5-17-Widescreen-80Gb-No-Reserve_W0QQitemZ180132448512QQihZ008QQcategoryZ4603QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jsmity/set ... 550697014/

majorbloodnock · June 2007

<blockquote id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Originally posted by chops_lad

The defrag will just have moved the related files nearer to each other to speed up access times between the files. This makes a bigger impact the less files you have. IIRC files are stored on HDD's using indexed sequential, which means that it will jump to the necessary section and then search through each file, if there are hundreds of files in a section then it will still take a while. <hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">
Close, but not quite. When a file is written, it's split up into small chunks (these days, most likely 4 kilobyte sized chunks - if you've ever formatted a disc, that's the "allocation unit size" the dialogue box is going on about). That means that a single file can end up dotted about all over a hard disc, and that means the heads doing the reading have to move back and forth a lot just to access one file. Defragmenting a hard disc is simply a routine for rearranging the bits of a file in such a way that the heads have to move as little as possible, so improving the access time. All pedantic, I know, but the main difference is that a fragmented hard disc has a more detrimental effect the more files you have.

Of course, if you don't want the problem at all, you could use Unix, which is all but immune to fragmentation problems, but running a defrag every now and then is probably a far easier solution.

Semper in excretia; sumus solum profundum variat

Bazza · June 2007

Thanks for all your help an advice guys.

The laptop I'm on is borrowed from my brother in law-he salvaged it from his works skip so it's not great anyway but was faster than it is now.

I'm a complete computer novice, droaning on-it's all jargon to me.

I like the sound of your machine Chops Lad, sort of spec I'm looking for, got any pics or links (although it'll take an age to load on this).

See, to me a good machine has a big hard drive, as big ram as poss, fast processor an all the neccesary jacks etc, oh an looks nice, lol.

I'll get saving an window shopping but my budget is around the 600 mark tops.

Thanks again for all your comments, if you hear of any good deals going them pls post them here...

RIDE IT LIKE YOU STOLE IT!!

Carrera Fury 06

http://www.flickr.com/photos/wa_wa_weewa/ - New pics added...

Unknown · June 2007

Excellent reply, as ever, from the Major.

Better still, Bazza - as jsmity says, get a Mac [;)]

Bikes

Unknown · June 2007

Can someone give me the URLs for the adaware (Lavasoft????) and Spybot stuff?

I want to be sure I'm going the right site and not a 'clone'.

Updated pics:
Giant Anthem
Bianchi Via Nirone
Kona Lava Dome - no more :-(

hsa · June 2007

Ad-Aware is Lavasoft site yeah
Spybot S&D get from Tucows or Download.com

Reputable download file sites like those are fine.

For virus scan I use free Avasti! Which I've used for over a year and I think it's great. Low resource too.

For free firewall Sygate is by far the best there is.

hsa · June 2007

Bazza you don't say which OS is on the laptop. If XP I find that a reformat at least once every 12 months or so is needed. XP really slows down after prolonged use even on higher end machines. What are the specs of the laptop?

For off the shelf PC's I'd recommend Dell too. For œ600 you'd get a really nice machine. Dell Dimension C521 Dual Athlon 4000 2GB RAM 320GB HDD Radeon X1300 Pro 20" Flat screen œ489 sounds good to me!

Unknown · June 2007

Bazza, This is very similar to my machine. I can highly recommend it.

Major, I stand corrected. I think what I was talking about was databases. Cheers Fella.

<center>Louise</center>
<center>Parktools Sheldon Brown</center>

BoingBoing · June 2007

Okay, again with clickys

Advanced Windows Care

Adaware

Spybot

Antivir

Sygate Personal Firewall

Hope that helps


<hr noshade size="1">
GT Avalanche 2.0 Disc 07::::Think::::Laugh::::Myspace

RobA · July 2007

Also use Ccleaner as it cleans all of the crap and cookies from the computer, which slows it down. http://www.filehippo.com/download_ccleaner/ Don't moan about the long adress as I don't know how to shorten it, as this website is crap and so complicated.

StefanH · July 2007

I've tried virtually every paid-for and free anti-virus, anti-spyware and firewall software available. The best (fastest, uses least memory, removes the most problems) is currently F-Secure.

I paid for 3 licenses the other day (after a 30-day trial) and haven't regretted it. It certainly beats having a plethora of separate software packages installed, even if they are free. The added benefit of everthing from one vendor outweighs the negative aspect of having to pay for it.

It's also very unobtrusive. Sure, you get pop-up warning when new or unrecognised software tries to connect to the internet, but all firewalls will do this. At least F-Secure is intelligent about it, unlike some other software packages (Norton, I'm looking at you).

If anyone is considering Norton, I would strongly advise against it. Installing free software is better than having your machine 'infected' with Norton products. Symantec make only one good piece of software, and that is Norton Ghost which most users won't even need (it's useful for system admins).

I have to 'repair' PC's a lot and the first thing I have to do is remove Norton Internet Security. It really is that awful.

Ghost Donkey · July 2007

When you get a new machine set up a user or limited account as soon as possible and use that as often as possible. It'll make it harder for anything malicious to be installed. The account that is autimatically created when you buy a pc or install an operating system is an admin account.

StefanH · July 2007

Ghost Donkey wrote:

When you get a new machine set up a user or limited account as soon as possible and use that as often as possible. It'll make it harder for anything malicious to be installed. The account that is autimatically created when you buy a pc or install an operating system is an admin account.

Sorry, but this is not helpful. Running on a limited account does nothing to prevent harmful software doing harmful stuff. Anything moderatly acidic is going to stroll right past such a 'restriction' and the only thing running on a limited account will do is reduce the usability of the computer.

Windows Vista uses this exact ethos throughout, which is why everyone using it gets bugged to hell by little popups saying "Windows needs you to authorise..." before doing anything remotely useful to the configuration of your machine. Everyone, and I do mean everyone, who finds where to switch that little feature off *will* switch that little feature off.

Windows (even Windows Vista) is not good at stopping bad software doing bad things. It's not entirely ineffective, but the way it does it is obtrusive and irritating.

Just pay for good software and use your PC for what it's there for: serving you!

Desktop pc's

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