Need some advice chaps. On the market for a new laptop or desktop. I have a 6 year old dell laptop which does the job for watching movies and surfing the tinternet anything else is too hard for it. All I really wanna do is download music and movies to external hard drives. I cant fathom windows 8 its pretty confusing. Have been tempted with a used mac desktop as there about 900 quid, or the mmacbook air. But have alot of people saying there good but you wont use it to its potential so a waste of money. Hoping you lot have some ideas. Also tempted to get someone to make me a pc. Basically o have a grand. Ideally dont wanna spend it all unless its a good purchase.
I much prefer Macs. Windows PCs just seem to be complicated; logging on takes ages, they always need updating, generally everything feels more difficult! Macs are simple and intuitive. All my biased opinion of course
If all you want to do is download and surf the web mate, £1k is a hell of a budget, for that you should be expecting a dual GPU gaming monster. You should only need to spend at the very most, half as much as that(im reading between the lines here assuming you dont need a monitor, OS etc). A very reliable north east based company will sort you out a custom built system with all the bells and whistles you need for about £525, see the link below. http://www.cyberpowersystem.co.uk/system/Ultra_SCYLLA_SE If you want to dip your toe in the Mac ecosystem, get a Mac Mini, there an idea entry point into the Mac world what ever you do dont get dragged into the Mac Vs PC world of fanboys, there two very different beasts, both have there place.
Well that pc does look the business like. I know nowt of spec so I have emailed that company with what I want so hopefully they will get back to me with some ideas. And good prices. Thanks very much for the top tip
No bother mate, cant rate the company high enough, i have had 5 units from them over the last 2 years for family members, not a single issue. The spec of the one i posted is still a bit high just for downloading and the net, but it would future proof you for a few years to come. If you need windows sorting let us know and we will sort you a Win7 out.
No mate don't work there, i work for an evil global corporation If you need a working windows 7 or Mac OS(depending on what you decided) PM me and ill get one to you, i belive we have a few mutual friends outside the board, if i cant get it to you that way get me a postal addy.
I got a MacBook Air 13". Negatives - More expensive. You need to check if software you want to use will work on it (in most cases now it will versus 5 years ago... more and more people are moving to Apple). Positives:Less goes wrong with it. It's fast as hell and remains fast as hell when I fill up the hard drive. Feels a different class to use it compared to the many Windows Laptops and PCs I've gone through. I was always Windows through and through until I spent a week playing with this. Will take a long time before anything needs to be upgraded. Watch out - if you need to burn CDs/DVDs, you may need a seperate Writer Unit or get the next model up the MacBook Pro. I just hoy MP3s onto USB and burn on an old machine I have. But as standard the MacBook Air does not come with a writer. I really do love using it, it's also stupidly thin and lightweight and fits into many a bag like a magazine.
I've got both a Macbook Pro and a PC (plus a PC laptop) and I have to agree with Rigs. Macs are brilliant machines, but you only get the best out of them if you're using them in publishing, web design, music production, graphics etc. For just surfing, a PC/laptop does the job just as well and for less money. The Macbooks do have a decent graphics card though, if you want to play games they're becoming more of an option. I have Steam installed on mine and out of the 65 games I've bought, half of them play on a Mac without any problems. Things to watch out for with Macs - the lowest unit is usually missing features from the one above. The Macbook Air doesn't have a CDROM drive (to save on weight), rumour has it they're going to do away with it from the Pro as well when the new version comes out. To be fair I've used my CDROM drive about 3 times so I wouldn't miss it, but other people might.
Well currently going through the company rigs posted earlier, I have sent emails and told them what I wanted. The man at the otherside was mint in sorting it out. But from what a few of the lads said £600 and the pc is apparently not all that. So im going through another company aswell to get the best deal. Altho the pc he has offered me seems mint from that i mean it looks cool. http://www.cyberpowersystem.co.uk/saved/648971
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FS-340-OK&groupid=43&catid=2476 and that's the other one. What do you lot reckon then
The Overclockers is a good BU(base unit) but to be honest is totally overboard for the net and downloading, its main drive is SSD, this and the fact its overclockers leads me to believe some one has given you some 'geek' advice, dont get me wrong its good, but would be like buying a Jag for the odd run to the shops.Just dont spend more than you have to, if your browsing and downloading there is no need what so ever for more than 4GB ram(pay no attention to its speed, its irrelevant for your use), a dual core is all you really need, save cost by going with an AMD CPU rather than intel, and again dont pay over the odds for a mega PSU or GFX card. That said all of the above does NOT apply if at any point you intend to play games, encode video etc. Nail down exactly what you going to use it for, if it is literally the web and downloading buy the cheapest you can find, example i have a BU in the dinning room that the wife and the kids use for web browsing, spotify and itunes etc, i put it together for about £90 and they never have an issue with it, that said it would fall over if i wanted to play any games less than 5 years old and over 1024x768, and it would probably take a week to unRar a 10GB video file.
Yeah mate all I wanna do is download movies, music and watch them. And websurf. There will be no games played. Fact.
