Uprgrade or hoof it out ?

Graham00

Graham00

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Graham Mc
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My current PC is a £1000 7yr old Fujitsu Siemens Scaleo 600, it has 2.8ghz Pentium4, 160gb HDD, 2gb RAM upgradeable to just 3 (already added a 1gb slot). CD Rom drive, DVD player drive (not bothered about a writer)

It creaks a bit running Elements and waiting time has risen lately,
it's been a good workhorse so as i have the cabinet and a respectable 17'' monitor what would be the best advisable thing to do ?
I thought about getting a superior motherboard but i suspect i'll have to upgrade the graphics and HDD too.

your thoughts please :) thanks.
 
Buy/build a new PC. Something with 4GB+ and Win7 64bit and core i5/i7 if you can afford it. You will need to upgrade everything as it is anyway. I'd also look at dual screen if you have space (don't know what I'd do now without my 2x24" monitors!)
 
Thanks Andy, i don't know what my budget is yet probably around £400, at least that would get me a new box.
I'll have a look online as i'm not a big fan of PCWorld, they've chucked out a few crappy setups in the past and you never know what you're properly getting.
 
Ebuyer normally have some good systems. If you need advice on choosing, just give me a shout :)
 
If you go down the new 'puter route, you will need to back up all your data, find/buy applications DVDs etc etc

I would suggest that, once you have done the above and before buying a new machine, you reinstall the OS, reinstall all your apps and see what happens.

When I used microshaft OS on my work machines, I made a point of reinstalling the OS every six to nine months. The effect is remarkable - like getting a new machine. No amount of fancy clean-up utilities can ever come as close to speeding up a sluggish machine as a complete reinstall.
 
2blue4u said:
If you go down the new 'puter route, you will need to back up all your data, find/buy applications DVDs etc etc

I would suggest that, once you have done the above and before buying a new machine, you reinstall the OS, reinstall all your apps and see what happens.

When I used microshaft OS on my work machines, I made a point of reinstalling the OS every six to nine months. The effect is remarkable - like getting a new machine. No amount of fancy clean-up utilities can ever come as close to speeding up a sluggish machine as a complete reinstall.
Click to expand...

Yeah, i see what you're saying i've done a re-install on this pc 3 times, i don't know how long the HDD will survive, maybe 3 more yrs.
I could do with a faster one for photoshop, i suppose i could get another 1gb stick from crucial and add to the other 2 i put in, i may even do that before buying a new one. :)
 
sorry im going to disagree there, unless youre constantly installing/uninstalling lots of apps there should be no need to reinstall your computer on a regular basis.

theres no point adding more than 3gb to your current system if youre running 32bit windows as the extra wont be seen.

a shade over £400 can get you an i3 based system with 4gb if thats any help to you?

http://www1.euro.dell.com/uk/en/hom...x?refid=inspiron-580&s=dhs&cs=ukdhs1&ref=dthp
 
Thankyou neil, it may be a good idea to keep up with the times and go Windows 7 - 64bit ? and for that reason i will have to look at a new system.
 
Graham00 said:
Hi Andy, been looking at this one - http://www.ebuyer.com/product/239782
i've looked but it doesn't seem to have a graphics card installed or is it pretty basic ?
Click to expand...
Hi Graham,

It has integrated graphics on board. Not as good as a separate graphics card. The processor isn't stellar by todays benchmarks, but will be OK for what you want (my main machine is with a processor that's a little quicker in benchmarks, and I run OK with RAW files from a 5Dmk2. It does slow down at times when doing lots of processing, but it isn't terrible). You'll also need to budget on an OS to put on there, plus I'd want to upgrade the RAM to at least 4G. In all, you'd probably be better off getting something like the one Neil suggests...

Also, you may find this page useful: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

Whilst it is impossible to compare CPUs on a single figure, it does give you an idea of the relative performance of the different CPUs. The E6600 in the system you quoted comes out at 2189 whilst the CPU in the m/c pointed to by Neil comes out at 3019 so about 40% "quicker". It's easy to get carried away on just looking at single numbers when there are lots of factors that go towards the speed of the system, but it does help to give you some reference pointgs (and to know when a system is really expensive or a bargain!).
 
2blue4u said:
When I used microshaft OS on my work machines, I made a point of reinstalling the OS every six to nine months. The effect is remarkable - like getting a new machine. No amount of fancy clean-up utilities can ever come as close to speeding up a sluggish machine as a complete reinstall.
Click to expand...

I never ever have this problem. The only time I reinstall the OS is when it gets shagged up beyond repair - and in the last two years this has happened twice; once was my fault, and the second was Vista, which was never right on that machine from day one.

I don't know what it is people manage to do that causes the OS to slow down so much over time, but I'd really like to know...
 
trencheel303 said:
I don't know what it is people manage to do that causes the OS to slow down so much over time, but I'd really like to know...
Click to expand...

indeed. we've got XP machines over in the warehouse that have not been touched by IT for years (other than automatic windows updates) that are still fresh as a daisy. but thats because theyre locked down so nothing gets fiddled with.
 
trencheel303 said:
I never ever have this problem.
Click to expand...
+1. Machines only ever get OS installed when building for the first time or replacing system disks (although I have image backups of all my system drives now so if/when I ever have to do a restore it should be pretty easy).
 
neil_g said:
indeed. we've got XP machines over in the warehouse that have not been touched by IT for years (other than automatic windows updates) that are still fresh as a daisy. but thats because theyre locked down so nothing gets fiddled with.
Click to expand...

The one I'm using here is XP and hasn't been "re-installed" ever since I got it new from Dell many years ago. It's my development machine at work and so has all sorts of random stuff installed on it. It's also not locked down at all, I can put whatever I like on - we don't have an IT department here to tell people they aren't allowed to do stuff with the computers :D.
 
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