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Computer Questions

I'm sick of this shitty laptop and want to buy a new computer. I've already got a monitor, keyboard and mouse so all i need is the hard drive thing. I don't want a mac.

I need it to be able to master demo cd's and use sound forge and basic word processing. It will not be used for games at all. I'd like a decent size hard drive so i can store all my mp3s. Do programs like photoshop, and MS office come as standard? It also needs to have enough power to handle superfast internet. I also want to use it to create program id's for radio shows.

Just wondering if anyone's got any suggestions or reccomendations / warnings? How much $$$ am I looking at?

cheers

Well, what you already have may not be compatible with what you can now buy.

Keyboard/Mouse would have to be at least PS/2 (5mm round plug), or USB (flat, 1cm wide, 2.5mm high)

Monitor should be OK, it'd be pretty hard not to have got a compatible monitor in the last 5 years. VGA (15 pin plug with a vague "D" shape), or DVI (for flat panel LCD) is fine

Go to the computer markets computer markets or nearest local equivalent.

For BASIC CD authoring, sound processing and normal front-office stuff (WP, spreadsheet etc), probably an AMD Duron would do the job, though personally I'd go the AMD Athlon if you could afford it.

Razor Prices are a great way to find the approximate cost of bits.

This is /way/ off topic for this forum though, so if you want more advice, chat to me over email/ICQ/MSN.

I'd say you'll get a system that will suit your purpose for about $900...

quote:

Originally posted by Mikrop I'd say you'll get a system that will suit your purpose for about $900...

or alternatively you could get
new case - $90
new motherboard - $150
Pentium 4 Processor - $300 or so
Pissweak "sparkles" graphics card - $99
New Hard Disk - $120
CD - RW - $95

and on top of that if you want to do a lot with audio, get a new Creative Sound Card... not sure how much they roughly cost, but it will be worth it over a pissy on board sound card

all up youre looking at maybe under $1000, and thats from a computer shop and would probably include software etc... if you can get a mate to set it all up you could probably get the equipment from swap meets, but that can be pretty dodgy stuff as i found out with a faulty motherboard and floppy drive... so be wary, and check out www.comtrader.com.au if you want it cheap and without warranty

My recommendations:
Of course you could go and buy parts and build your own computer according to the budged you have but as it sounds you don't look like someone on the know ( no offence) so your best option is to find a local dealer and purchase it from there of course you could go and shop around for best prices.
to give you some ideas i'll write some PC packages that are available in Melbourne...

1-Duron system: AMD Duron 1.2 Ghz, Asus Mb, 256 SDRAM, 40gB HDD etc. $530
2-Intel P4 2.4 Ghz 533Mhz front side bus (FSB), Gigabyte m/b, 40gb hdd, 512 MB DDR RAM, 17" Digital Monitor, 300W poer supply, 52X speed CD Writer, Yamaha Sound (possibly on-board!), KB, Mouse, Juster Speakers, 56K internal Modem $1095
3-Intel P4 2.67 GHz, 512 MB DDR RAM, 80 GB HDD, 64MB graphics card, 19" Flat screen monitor
DVD-RW- Burner K/B, Mouse $1499

Some AMD Athlon-XP systems offer similar capabilities with little less pricing but I'd go with Pentiums. Computers never been this cheap with such performance increase. Its time to buy a new one

Heh...40gig hard-drive!! hahahahahha, i dont think i could ever go back from havin 160+

quote:

Originally posted by Pointy Heh...40gig hard-drive!! hahahahahha, i dont think i could ever go back from havin 160+

So true, but don't put all your eggs in the same basket! It's better having multiple HDD's (I do have 4, 40 Gig each) If one fails and its unrecoverable u don't loose everything!!!

Well I've chucked all my eggs in half the basket needed to hold em 2x80gig Seagates, under a RAID 0 config. So I got double the chance of losing all my data

get a decent video card if your going to get a fast processor, otherwise you'll find that it lags quite a bit if you get a shitty arsed video card...and oh yeah get ddr ram instead of sdram, sdram is more getting more expensive due to less supply and demand for it, plus ddr ram is better quality and faster

yea good time to buy a computer now due to nice exchange rate of aussie dollar

If you want to do alot of audio stuff, then get as grunty a cpu as possible. Stay away from durons or celerons, they just dont have enough grunt. As it was also stated, get DDR Ram. Here is a system spec rundown with approximate prices:

CPU:AMD Athlon XP 2500+ w/Barton Core oem cooler - $180

Mobo: ASUS A7V8X VIA KT400, AGP8X ATA133 w/10/100 Lan, S-ATA & IEEE1394 - $180

Memory: Kingmax 512MB PC3200 Double Data Rate(DDR) RAM CAS-2.5-400MHz Rated - $155 *dont scrimp and buy cheap ram, remember you get what you pay for!*

Video: Leadtek A180T Geforce 4 MX440-8XAGP-8X 64MB DDR w/TV - $115

HDD: Seagate Barracuda VI 120.0GBHDD IDE, 8MB Cache, 8.9ms, 7200rpm , ATA-100, w/ G-Force Protection - $266

Sound: Creative SoundBlaster Audigy Digital Entertainment Special Edition support DVD Audio, Dolby Digital EX 6.1, THX THX-Certified ( No Games bundled ) - $140

Total: $1036.

But if you can build it yourself and dont know anyone that will do it for a bottle of something you may need to include a buliding fee. Ranges depending on where you go. These prices are from perth so it maybe different depending on your location. They are wholesale + gst + 10% markup. Im pretty sure 10-15% is average on hardware. Anway, $1000 should get you a nice beefy machine. That sort of system will hold all your mp3's and run your photoshop and your MS word at the same time no worries

Hope it helps.

wow, cheers for the advice everyone, it's appreciated as I really know sfa about this kind of stuff. I'll probably bump it up when I get some packages for you guys to analyse.

Some people are saying to steer away from Soundblaster sound cards? any opinion's on this?

They aren't too bad, but I'd go the SB Audigy 2 Platinum with the Live Drive thing. A mate picked one up about a week ago at a computer fair for $350, though they probably retail for $400ish. They have front panel connectivity for most stuff. Razor prices is pretty good for price comparisons if you know what you're looking for. I'd suggest finding out which of your mates is the techno-geek dude (maybe ya little / older bro's gaming friends ...), and getting them to take you along to the computer fair with a list of things to buy.

My suggestions would be:
CPU: AMD Athlon > 1800+ (these drop in price all the time, so if you're on a budget go cheap and buy a better one later, just make sure you get a decent mobo that supports higher rated chips)
Ram: 512Mb DDR (leet's advice is spot on here, though if you can find / afford corsair RAM go for it)
Hard disk: these are cheap, so get as large as you can afford. Recent prices of around $200 for 120Gb @ comp fair.
Mobo: I don't know enough about the current breed of mobos, but see advice above, get one that is future proof, and supports more than what you want to put in it today.
Case: get one that is easy to work in, rather than one that looks swanky (hopefully these can be combined)

If you let us know your budget, we can work out exactly what you will be able to get

Prob about $900-$1100. I should have the $$ in about a month or so. None of my freinds are computer savvy so most likely I'll buy and get it put together at a specialty shop.

cheers guys, though you're starting to lose with me now with all this jargon

dunno about everyone else here but I'd say get a removable HD bay, they're about $20 and saves a whole lot of time if you tend to take your HDs around to other peoples' computers..

quote:

Originally posted by kid_dynamite dunno about everyone else here but I'd say get a removable HD bay, they're about $20 and saves a whole lot of time if you tend to take your HDs around to other peoples' computers..

Thats a NO NO for Pro's (like me)!! Delicate things Like Large capacity Hard Disks don't like beeign moved around, plugged and un-plugged so often. Considering most ppl don't have 'em whast the use of having a HDD bay in your PC (+ it looks ugly) If you wanna move Data around its best to buy one of those USB memory sticks. 256mb sells like $150 and 90% of PC have USB ports installed some of them even at the front side of the PC...
my 2c

quote:

Originally posted by Ghostface wow, cheers for the advice everyone, it's appreciated as I really know sfa about this kind of stuff. I'll probably bump it up when I get some packages for you guys to analyse. Some people are saying to steer away from Soundblaster sound cards? any opinion's on this?

AFAIK, Soundblaster crap on all others, especially with the latest series out. If you can afford it and would get use out of it, then get the ones budled with the front bay drive - otherwise, a simple PCI slot (in the back thingy) will do fine.. No point in having great soundcard with crap speakers though..

While the topic is still kind of fresh...

I'm thinking of getting a laptop PC soon. I have a couple questions:

What's the best brand to buy?

Where's the cheapest to buy from?

Does anyone know anything about Intel's new mobile technology? I think it's called Centrino.

Thanks.

with laptops it depends what you want it for. If you want it for games your going to spending a lot of money, if not then not so much.

List what you want the laptop to do, figure out the specs, go shopping for the best price.

escee knows the score... with notebook laptops, you need to find out what the main use of it will be. With the so called new Centrino technology, it is aimed more for power-saving use - which it does very well. Intel have been putting heaps into marketing the Centrino - don't believe all the hype. IMO, it does not live up to its hype and especially when it comes to price.
Centrino comes down to 3 things - Intels new Pentium-M CPU, the i855 chipset and its onboard Wireless network adaptor. In benchmakrs, there are some cases where a lower clocked P-M cpu will thrash a much higher clocked P4-m CPU, and that is because the P-M executes more instructions per clock than a P4. Intel thought it would sell more if they higher there frequencies because apparently, we - the customers and general public think that the higher the GHz, the faster it is - which is definitely not the case. Which brings me to AMD. AMD's Athlon desktop CPU's have a much higher IPC than Intel's processors. Only problem is that they are using desktop CPU's in notebooks i.e. chewing your batterey life like theres no tomorrow. I'm not too sure if they have a dedicated mobile-version of Athlons, Can someone confirm this? Also beware that there are some notebook models that have desktop versions of P4's too.
In terms of gaming, in a practical sense, theres not much room. In most cases, if all you do is gaming, then you are a hardcore gamer - which means you are always playing the latest games - which require the latest the greatest video cards to run @ a decent speed. There are notebooks with Nvidia's Geforce4 GO! cards or ATI's Radeon 7000 - 8000 range, but they are indeed quite costly and does not justify for it.

Brands: Toshiba, Sony, Fujitsu and IBM are quite good. But the specs and nitty gritty stuff is more important. IMO, the motherboard/chipset is the most important factor.

Price: Theres not much margin on laptops for retailers, so expect prices to be around the same @ all retailers. Those little local PC shops seem to sell them a bit cheaper than places like Harvey Norman, Harris Tech and so forth, BUT check that they provide full waranty and all of that... Theres nothing more farked up than a dodgy PC store

Harris Technology have the biggest range of notebooks that I know of :
http://www.ht.com.au




/me is bored indeed... works sucks

i find that i use my laptop when its plugged in the majority of the time anyway.

Soundblasters are crap, look at
http://www.pcavtech.com/soundcards/compare/index.htm
if you want something decent. See if you can pick up an old turtle beach card, they are very, very nice, some of the others there like the event and midiman stuff is expensive. Also old soundblasters based on the ensoniq chips (es1570 i think). The live's are not as nice as the older sb 128's based on this chip, i know i have both of them. The SB live's are nice for some things.... not too bad for recording. It does depend what you listen to it through though. If you are using "normal" consumer grade shite speakers you won't be able to tell. I am listening now to mp3s through 2 150 rms watt Peerless speakers, 3 way made in Denmark with custom few 100 liter speaker boxs. One of my amps is AB class transister only no chips made in melbourne..... and sennheiser headphones.... but still, there are a lot of nice options in soundcards....

Aaahhh laptops Well, I happen to be close friends with the laptop guys at work, so I get to play with practically every major lappy there is (except Acer for some reason).

I can say, with the new Centrinos

The Dell ones are flimsy. The Inspirons weigh a tonne (3.something kg). The get hot where you rest your hands. They have fairly dull screens, though the 1400x1050 is a nice res Not very good battery life.

The IBM ones are solid, weigh about 2.2kg (with the small battery). Their screens are good (reasonably bright). They do get hot where you rest your hands. Excellent battery life.

The Toshiba I played with was super-dooper light, thin. It was nice and rugged too. Only one type 2 PCMCIA slot though. Very nice screen. Didn't seem to get too hot under my hands. Very good battery life.

From talking to others, Acer are the best, but then again, what do you expect from the most expensive by quite a margin?

Centrino is a nice chipset for the Windows crowd, but there's no Linux support for the 802.11 (Wi-Fi) chipset in it yet.

Beware with the first generation of any new technology though, it's usually got it's bugs to wrinkle out. This applies to phones too (all the 1st gen camera phones are duds, all the 1st gen 3G phones are duds).

quote:

Originally posted by bragi Beware with the first generation of any new technology though, it's usually got it's bugs to wrinkle out. This applies to phones too (all the 1st gen camera phones are duds, all the 1st gen 3G phones are duds).

not having either of these, can you tell me why they are duds and what bugs they have?

Being in the telco industry, yes - photo phones suck. Some phones support only 256 colours with a maximum resolution of 640 x 480, some phones have half of that - YUK! Screen runs on STN, but there are some phones that run off TFT displays (4000 - 65K colours). With Telstra customers, you can only send photo's to Telstra or Vodaphone users @ the moment. 75cents per photo - rip off. JPEG compression is utter shite. Its all just a gimmick.
Not too sure about 3rd Generation mobile though.

Thanks for all the info guys...

Basically, I want the laptop to be my PC. So I want to be able to do almost everything on it. Burn CDs, watch DVD (with 5.1 sound if possible!), use the internet (obviously!), listen to music, and maybe play games too... Battery life and weight are not that important since it will be plugged in most of the time...

[edit] I sound like a fkn n00b!!! [/edit]

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