Are these PC's any good?

AndyWest

AndyWest

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To cut a long explanation short I get Comet vouchers from work so can basically get a free PC. Comet sell:

HP
Acer
Packhard Bell

With a decent screen would these be any good for basic office, email, web and Photo editing? I have a 4 year old iMac which has served me well but i fear it may be on it's way out although it's OK at the moment. I want a bigger screen (24"+) and am happy to go back to Windows. They also sell Macs but getting a free PC and a decent monitor paid by what i would get for my iMac would mean a complete free system! I don't do gaming, I just use LR3, PSE9, Web browser and iTunes plus email all open at the same time.

Your thoughts...

EDIT: I can also get PC WORLD vouchers!!
 
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Thanks.

Reliability is something i have got used to with the iMac so that is very important. There are a few progs I would like to run that don't run on Mac so I'm thinking a PC is the way to go.
 
travellingcello said:
Ok I used to be a bit of a mac fanboy so you'll have to excuse me for being biased but if you want stability/reliability......
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Don't buy a cheap mass market computer...

I guess it really doesn't matter between those three brands tbh but i doubt any monitor you get with them will be much cop for photos so i'd be looking at getting the monitor separate then buying a base.
 
AndyWest said:
Thanks.

Reliability is something i have got used to with the iMac so that is very important. There are a few progs I would like to run that don't run on Mac so I'm thinking a PC is the way to go.
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If you really have a few programs for which there is no Mac version, why not use a virtual machine or bootcamp?

Comet sell Macs don't they? :)
 
dejongj said:
If you really have a few programs for which there is no Mac version, why not use a virtual machine or bootcamp?

Comet sell Macs don't they? :)
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Yes Comet do sell Macs and i may save up and get one of those. I don't want to do the bootcamp thing as I am restricted for HDD space. I only have 320 GB which most is used up. I do have an external drive of the same capacity but that's for back up.

Thinking about it last night I think I'm going to leave it for now and see how my current Mac behaves and then think about it again in 6 months. I think it would be daft getting one of the Comet/PC world machines as you can get far better for the same money out there. Just need to decide whether to stay with Apple or go back to Windows.
 
Hey,

You say your existing mac is on its way out? What makes you say that?

My MacBook is 4 years old and going fine with no problems, and that's running OSX Lion too.

Maybe you should look at spending a few £ to max out the RAM and maybe put in a bigger hard-drive, All told you could do it for under £100, and PC world should sell everything you need to make that Mac speedy again!
 
AndyWest said:
Yes Comet do sell Macs and i may save up and get one of those. I don't want to do the bootcamp thing as I am restricted for HDD space. I only have 320 GB which most is used up. I do have an external drive of the same capacity but that's for back up.
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I've run virtual machines across networks and external drives no problem. Although I made this comment in respect to your new machine :)
 
iamchrisphoto said:
My MacBook is 4 years old and going fine with no problems, and that's running OSX Lion too.
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It's still running on a 4 year old CPU. By todays standards, that'll be slow....
 
arad85 said:
It's still running on a 4 year old CPU. By todays standards, that'll be slow....
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From having several Macs varying from 2.0 C2D to i7-2600 I can honestly say the only areas where you really notice that is transcoding movies and dealing with my D7000 RAW files in Aperture on a 30" monitor. For anything else, nah not really...
 
If you can get free vouchers for pc world/currys/comet why not buy something then sell on eBay getting yourself some free dosh
 
dejongj said:
From having several Macs varying from 2.0 C2D to i7-2600 I can honestly say the only areas where you really notice that is transcoding movies and dealing with my D7000 RAW files in Aperture on a 30" monitor. For anything else, nah not really...
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Yes, that's EXACTLY where I noticed the difference between my C2D E8400 and overclocked i7-2600K. Except I have a 5D2 rather than D7000 ;)

Although everything else tends to run a tad more responsively.
 
Hi there,

I don't know if it's been pointed out but Acer own Packard Bell, so they are more or less the same components that are in them.

HP machines have the brand name but in recent years, their laptops in particular have not been the most reliable (one of our clients had a 63% return rate). There desktops have a better track record but again it really depends on the model and the components used.

I would say "build your own" as it usually works out cheaper but obviously that choice is not for everyone. If you buy from PCWorld, say no thanks to their Symantec or McAfee bundles that they will flog you, there are far better free anti-malware & anti virus products that you can download.

Cheers

Al
 
Just found out i can get Apple store vouchers instead so looks like it's going to be a replacement iMac....whoop!
 
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