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Wheels

Wheels

Julian Keeler
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Can anyone recommend a reliable pc and retailer, my laptop cant manage to do more than 1 thing at once, I am going to have to get the said machine on finance.

And don't mention Apple as I said finance not mortgage :lol:
 
I recently bought the cheapest PC setup from PC world for about £350 and it runs CS5 and other stuff superbly....
 
Why not go to a little computer shop and get one built to your spec. Just a thought

Realspeed
 
Wheels said:
Can anyone recommend a reliable pc and retailer, my laptop cant manage to do more than 1 thing at once, I am going to have to get the said machine on finance.

And don't mention Apple as I said finance not mortgage :lol:
Click to expand...

Wheels, before you go and shell out a load of dosh, could you post the make and specs of the laptop that you have at the moment?

It may be possible to upgrade it quite easily for far less than a new one.
 
Well the up side of that is that you can make a difference for not a lot of money.

I'm going to assume that it still has the default 512Mb of memory, and to upgrade that to 2Gb of 240-pin DIMM, DDR2 PC2-5300 would cost approx £35 (price quoted from www.crucial.com), which should make quite a difference.

A complete reinstall of the operating system should also get rid of anything that's causing it to lag badly, especially if it still has the original Norton AV installed.

Basically getting someone (ie man in small shop) to do a refresh and RAM upgrade, should cost around £100-150 at the most, as long as you back up your own files before hand, and should give you a significantly faster machine.


If you want to get a new shiny one then £350-500 should get you a decent new one from either PCWorld or even Dell direct.

If you are going to use PCW always check their website for prices first, as they can equal quite a saving on paying instore. By all means look instore, but them either order home delivery or collect in store from their site. If you have someone handy who knows what they are looking at their refurb offers can be OK as well; just don't be tempted to buy a Packard Bell no matter how good it seems!
 
If you have not already done this I suggest you update all your security progs and run them

Get rid of any nasties they find.

Clear out the temp files and any other unnecessary one.

Clean the registry

Check what is being loaded at startup. If you have CCleaner it has an option which will show you the start up items. Google any you aren't sure about and decide if you really want them. There are only two essential start up items - firewall and antivirus.

Check what processes are running (Ctrl, Alt & Del) to see if anything is hogging resources. If you want to prevent any of them running you may need to go into Services, via the Control Panel and Administrative Tools, and disable them. Just be careful not to disable something essential. There are guides on the Net.

Delete any programs you no longer use. If the drive doesn't have 10 -15% free space things may slow down.

Defrag the drive.

These may help.

Next step is save the important files/photos and reformat the drive and reinstall XP.

Dave
 
For £150 you could upgrade the memory to 2gb and install a copy of Windows 7 Home premium. It would happily run CS5 with no probs then.
 
ChrisH said:
For £150 you could upgrade the memory to 2gb and install a copy of Windows 7 Home premium. It would happily run CS5 with no probs then.
Click to expand...

Why bother to move to Win7 when the hardware won't be able to make the most out of it? Xp is just as fast, and if you are going to upgrade the OS, you might as well do the whole shebang.
 
I think that it already has 2Gb of RAM in it from memory...... It certainly has at least 1Gb. If you want a laptop then it is going to cost, for a desktop it should not be too bad, we can get the parts from Scan and I'll knock it together in an hour. It all depends on how much you have to spend. There are lots of people on here who are mad upgraders too so it might be worth doing a wanted add. Any Core2duo setup with 4Gb of RAM and a decent HD + reasonable graphics card should do all that you want.
 
wheels try installing Speccy, that will at least tell you what you have and then others can advice if its worth upgrading.
 
cowasaki said:
I think that it already has 2Gb of RAM in it from memory...... It certainly has at least 1Gb.
Click to expand...

TBH if it's got at least one Gig and it's clunking then it's probably worth doing an upgrade along the lines of what you've suggested, as it's probably got the Semperon chip in it.
 
We have two Acer Apire laptops in our house, very reliable and fast, and both cost under £400
 
If it helps on the building front, I got a mircoATX board and 2GB memory in the for sale for £50. Just needs a processor and your well away :thumbs:
 
its xp version 2002 AMD turion ml-32 64 mobile 1.79ghz and 704mb ram
 
cowasaki said:
I think that it already has 2Gb of RAM in it from memory...... It certainly has at least 1Gb. If you want a laptop then it is going to cost, for a desktop it should not be too bad, we can get the parts from Scan and I'll knock it together in an hour. It all depends on how much you have to spend. There are lots of people on here who are mad upgraders too so it might be worth doing a wanted add. Any Core2duo setup with 4Gb of RAM and a decent HD + reasonable graphics card should do all that you want.
Click to expand...

I dont have anything to spend at the moment thats why I am going t o have to go down the finance road.
 
Have you considered the small upgrade to the hardware that others have suggested? If the RAM isn't maxxed, then doing so will help. A quick trip to MSCONFIG to trim out unwanted startup items will help too.
 
Julian - please take a look at http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/contact-us/
you can build your own spec. and if you join their forum you can have any questions answered by knowledgable people and 'techies' at PCS.

dave
 
I thought that I had upgraded the RAM to 1Gb or more before you got it. If you buy a 1Gb SoDimm and stick it in to replace the 256Mb one then you will have 1.5Gb which should help for the moment and will certainly improve it :)

So you really need a

1Gb DDR SoDimm

Which someone might have lying around but otherwise should cost about £35 (I know this is a picture of a 512Mb one :))

156699-a.jpg


FROM SCAN : <LINK>
 
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cowasaki said:
So you really need a

1Gb DDR SoDimm

Which someone might have lying around but otherwise should cost about £35
Click to expand...


Ermmm ..Yes! :nuts:

Sorry about the wrong specs above, I clicked on the Dell Poweredge Ad under the drop down menu!! :D

DDR PC3200 is what I should have put.
 
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