Reliable PC

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Beardy

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Hi,

I need to buy a PC for my mother...most important things are reliability and or customer service from wherever we buy it from.

She will only be using it for web browsing, e-mail, word docs, basic digital photo use and webacm/skype for talking to my sister in New York.

Budget is flexible but I think any PC on the market is more than capable of handling her requirements. Back in the days I bought a PC the main choice to make seemed to be AMD or Intel processor ? Which one is better now ?

I have an iMac and knwo they use Intel but no idea what is good for PC's.

Thanks!
 
for that sort of usage intel vs amd isnt going to be important to be honest.

personally im an intel guy an i5 box with 4gb is probably going to be the lowest spec id opt for.

as for makes personally ive had no bother with dell, but thats a business environment.
 
I use both here. I prefer Intel these days (they tend to be more power efficient - certainly the later models are), but as long as you get a decent processor you should be fine. Personally, if I were looking at a low cost machine for someone, I'd probably go i3-2xxx or i5-2xxx depending on how much you want to pay. Look £300-£500 depending on specs etc and assuming you have a monitor/keyboard etc you can reuse. I'd prefer 4G memory too and Win 7 64bit...
 
Thanks....will have a look for those specs.

PC Specialist look pretty good only thing that concerns me about buying from someone like them is that might do an Evesham!
 
My first computer was a Time... £1500 and a 600MHz processor and pitiful amounts of memory. Ahh that must have been 12 years ago.... Doesn't time fly :D
 
RobertP said:
Have you considered a laptop?
Click to expand...

For what my Mum needs a laptop would be perfect! The thing is she's 75 and a nice big screen to look at photos etc is probably better. Also a laptop means wifi which is something else to go wrong! Much as I love my Mum I'd rather not have to make the two hour round trip to get the wifi sorted if it develops a fault! I have a very young family so it's not always easy to make time for that kind of thing.
 
Have a look at Novatech. They have a lot of systems for different levels of use and they regularly do well in awards.

Dave
 
staying off topic....My first computer was an Amstrad 8086 later replaced with a 'wren computers' 286 and a self built 386 with co processor followed that.

Back on topic.... I doubt you'll have much trouble with any reputable brand. Maybe setting it up so there is a 'restore from image' possibility might be an idea. Could be reassuring for someone a bit scared of computers to know they only have to do x and y and the computer is back to how they normally have it. Storage of documents etc might have to be on a separate drive or partition to avoid the restore. Anyway something to consider :)
 
Beardy said:
For what my Mum needs a laptop would be perfect! The thing is she's 75 and a nice big screen to look at photos etc is probably better. Also a laptop means wifi which is something else to go wrong! Much as I love my Mum I'd rather not have to make the two hour round trip to get the wifi sorted if it develops a fault! I have a very young family so it's not always easy to make time for that kind of thing.
Click to expand...

I bought my mum (who is older than yours) a laptop ages ago, but she never really found it easy to use, however recently she had a shot of my ipad and fell in love with it (the touch screen and swipe-to-scroll being her favourite things about it), bought one and is never off it now!
 
RobertP said:
staying off topic....My first computer was an Amstrad 8086
Click to expand...

pffft, 16 bit processor and 20 bit address space (due to the segment registers) meaning 1MB useable memory? You were spoiled :naughty:

My first computer was a ZX81 with 1024 bytes of RAM on board. 8 bit processor, 16 bit address space meaning 64KB addressable. Those were the days :lol:
 
onomatopoeia said:
pffft, 16 bit processor and 20 bit address space (due to the segment registers) meaning 1MB useable memory? You were spoiled :naughty:

My first computer was a ZX81 with 1024 bytes of RAM on board. 8 bit processor, 16 bit address space meaning 64KB addressable. Those were the days :lol:
Click to expand...

Aye, Sinclair was the man!


Anyway, what is this wi-fi stuff?

If you really want to go the laptop route......

....Connect the laptop by LAN cable and Bob's yer Aunty!
 
Tsk.. ZX81. I was posh :p I had a BBC Micro. The upgrade of memory from 16k to 32k was painful at £100 though :eek:
 
arad85 said:
Tsk.. ZX81. I was posh :p I had a BBC Micro. The upgrade of memory from 16k to 32k was painful at £100 though :eek:
Click to expand...

I had one of them as well, after the Spectrum that replaced the ZX81. Remember going to Viglen to get a floppy disk upgrade and waiting while they soldered the FDC and supporting TTL ICs to the board.

It's still in my loft, wonder if it still works.
 
Ahh... the good old days :D
 
Mikesphotaes said:
Aye, Sinclair was the man!


Anyway, what is this wi-fi stuff?

If you really want to go the laptop route......

....Connect the laptop by LAN cable and Bob's yer Aunty!
Click to expand...

Very high tech! Knowing my Mum she'd trip up on the cable!
 
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