Its time for a new PC, I have never had a laptop I work from home and don’t need a pc on the move, so buy a laptop or another desktop.

Is the advantage of easy portability in the house worth the extra cost?

I cant imagine working on a 15″ screen so it would be pluged in to a monitor anyway, but I have this nagging doubt I am missing something not having a laptop.

For mobility I prefer a phone.

PC is therefore never moved around and can benefit from power, cooling, connectivity and a full sized keyboard and screen.

You’ll get much more PC for your money – and just buy a cheap tablet for use around the house.

I need a laptop but rarely use it at home and prefer to use my PC (or tablet when sat in front of the TV).

If you buy a laptop it sounds like it will just end up being ‘docked’ to a monitor and keyboard. Just buy a small form factor PC if you don’t need the power a full sized PC can provide.

My current pc has a Intel® Core™2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz × 4

Are these processors significantly better?
Intel Xeon E3-1230 3,2 GHz
Quad Core

Intel Xeon W3520 mit 2,66 GHz
QuadCore

Intel Xeon E3-1230 3,2 GHz
Quad Core

Laptops are worse than PCs in every way apart from the fact you can move them about, get a desktop.

My current pc has a Intel® Core™2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz × 4

Are these processors significantly better?
Intel Xeon E3-1230 3,2 GHz
Quad Core

Intel Xeon W3520 mit 2,66 GHz
QuadCore

Intel Xeon E3-1230 3,2 GHz
Quad Core

Yes – Xeon is Intels server line and you’ll only usually find them in fancy workstation PCs (apart from servers of course).

Its time for a new PC

Why?

>Are these processors better?

Why on earth are you looking at those?? That’s 1366/1155 stuff, from ’09-’10!

No, don’t buy those chips unless you have the motherboard and RAM etc already. Your Q series is DDR2, so neither of those are going to be transferrable. Some of those chips can still kick, but you need a good overlocking motherboard of the era and that’s about £150. They’re all waay behind the current crop of CPUs though, as long as you compare to a modern quadcore or better.

If you’re building a new machine now on a budget, go AMD Ryzen. There’s motherboard, RAM and CPU bundles at very sharp prices right now online, like at scan or ebuyer.

Laptops are good for sitting in front of the TV with 🙂

People actually run Q6600 at 2.4?!?

Desktop and tablet for the same money as a decent laptop, just get the bluetooth keyboard for the tablet

If it’s just for office duties and media, Q6600 is fine, up it to 4gb ram, add an SSD drive and fresh copy of Windows and it will fly.

You could get new case/ keyboard and mouse to further freshen it up.

I only just retired mine 6 months ago, but I like to play games so it wasn’t quite cutting it in that respect anymore.

Why?

Because my current PC is a 2009 model and the graphics card drivers for GeForce GTX 550 Ti/PCIe/SSE2 are becoming an issue issue.the pc has been super reliable i blow the dust out once a year
voila.

Desktop and tablet for the same money as a decent laptop, just get the bluetooth keyboard for the tablet

Do what @mike says with possibly no bluetooth keyboard if you are not really doing significant document creation on the move / tablet

OP if you really wanted to save money you could buy a 2-3yr old PC of a decent spec which could be had for £150-200 (?). There are plenty of folk here who could advise yes or no on anything you see.

Do what @mike says with possibly no bluetooth keyboard if you are not really doing significant document creation on the move / tablet

When the keyboard takes up so much of the screen it’s a pain, it’s one of the worst parts of tablets in general. Keyboard cases are prefect for using with them.

If you do get a laptop, avoid one with a Micro-HDMI port.

Biggest load of crap I’ve ever seen. Laptop is a month old, port got broken yesterday as my wife plugged in the HDMI, then tilted the laptop to plug in the power. Result, HDMI lead bent 45 degrees and suspect the port itself is busted.

Its a light laptop and was on the carpet, a USB, mini displayport or normal size HDMI would have just laughed it off…

What’s the pc actually used for?
You mentioned something about graphics drivers being an issue, what sort of issue?

One of these HPZ2 it’s half as big as my laptop ( thicker for sure ) but it’s full power Xeon pc I can fit in a laptop bag

I like being able to carry the laptop around, use it on my lap while sitting in the lounge, also when travelling. Plug in to a cheap monitor for serious work use (= instant double screen setup). Of course it’s a lot more expensive than a similar spec pc would be, but much more flexible too.

Word processing, photo editing, in the long dark days of winter a bit of empire total war or similar and file storage, I work as the devil (independent estate agent) so lots of pictures.

The nvidia drivers seam unstable especially after an upgrade but that’s because I am on Ubuntu linux.

I just looked up the service tag the pc is actually 2008 bloody well made these Dels.

My laptop is a 2008 Dell also. It’s fine.

You could just replace the graphics card? Maybe max out the RAM, throw an SSD in there and relegate the mechanical drive to be data storage, job jobbed.

Budget ?

You could just replace the graphics card? Maybe max out the RAM, throw an SSD in there and relegate the mechanical drive to be data storage, job jobbed.

Estate-agenting the estate agent ?

“With a new roof, walls, windows and floors this would make for the ideal house.”

400 euro

found these on a german ebay come with win 10 pro and 12 gig ram but are they any good iam so out of touch with pc’s

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Dell-Precision-T3500-Workstation-Xeon-W3680-6-x-3-33GHz-12GB-RAM-FX3800-Win10/352108937963?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2060353.m1438.l2649

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Dell-Precision-T3500-Workstation-Xeon-W3680-6-x-3-33GHz-12GB-RAM-Win10-FX3800/352108936273?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2060353.m1438.l2649

Similar to my home machine, but beware non standard PSU etc, repairs in the future would be costly. Also postage charges? Why not just order a modern build with an ATX case and nice new bits, pretty sure you could get a similar spec, or better for that price.

it’s a dell. you’ll be able to get spares for it for years. have used dells for 14 years or so at work. never run in to an issue sourcing spares.
dunno about the vfm OP, can’t be arsed to look, sorry.
if you fancy a tablet, take a look at the chuwi hi10pro. just got one. great bit of kit for the money. the keyboard is very good.

I think that Gofasterstripes point was that, being an older, expensive machine with proprietary parts like the power supply, then it will be relatively expensive to fix if something does go wrong.

I’m not sure that an old workstation is the right way to go for the OP – a bit like using a sledgehammer to crack a cactus, but if their budget is €400 then they are an option.

I am so ignorant when it comes to a PC all i know is Dell seam to last and last.

Tablets are out i just gave mine away cant get on with the idea its a phone and a pc for me the tablet just sucks and i dont like the touch interface.

We always bought Dell, the hardware lasted well it was just the typical Windows slow down / clutter up which caused us to repurchase. The last one we had the hard drive died after 5 years but thats not uncommon on any PC or Mac.

Just go on the Dell site (I can’t as outside UK) and look through home machines 8gb ram / 250ssd if you can spec that (based on your posts you don’t need more), if you have a decent screen then keep that but if its as old as the box then a new modern screen (27?) will make a big difference too

I am Based in France as well Jamba.

I really dislike laptops ….
As someone else said everything is worse except you can carry them about.

My work laptop at home is plugged into an external mouse, keyboard and monitor.
Typing is awful and the cursor keeps getting knocked so I’ll end up typing in the middle of a previous line. I can fix that by turning off the touchpad… or external keyboard .. I need reading glasses to use or an external monitor …

Once this is all done it’s no longer really portable without unhooking everything…

That said lot of people love them.

My main desktop is currently broken and I haven’t had time to diagnose and fix… work being rather hectic for the last few weeks. My 2007 iMac is still working and indeed I’m typing on it now
I expect end of this week I might pull apart the 2006 ish desktop (more workstation as it has 8 cores) and reuse most of it for a rebuild. It might just need a good vacuum and filters changed and fans cleaned…

If not I’ll just stick something as generic as possible inside.

We always bought Dell, the hardware lasted well it was just the typical Windows slow down / clutter up which caused us to repurchase.

That’s a coincidence, only last week I had to replace my car because it had run out of oil.

My tuppence.

Get the cheapest laptop that will run the software you want. SSD’s are nice, but it depends how you use them (despite the lack of moving parts they’re not intended to be re-written frequently, so best to have an SSD for the OS and software, and conventional HDD’s for file storage).

Buy an OEM windows 10 key from ebay for about £3 which will let you put a fresh install on whenever you feel like it to speed it up again. In Fact you may as well do that with your old laptop anyway.

Get a s/h gaming PC off ebay for home use and anything more intensive if you need it. Computers depreciate quicker even than bikes! Last years £1500 I5-6600K gaming ‘rig’ that cost some spotty teenager £1500 is now <£500 because intel are now on their 7th gen chips.

We always bought Dell, the hardware lasted well it was just the typical Windows slow down / clutter up which caused us to repurchase.

conversely i have 4 or 5 dells downstairs right now running XP that sporadically get fired up for use as control systems for image processing/machine vision so that i can test against them, and they all boot pretty quickly ( <1min ), shut down quickly, and otherwise run well. not bad for an OS launched more than 15 years ago. they’ve all been used variously for playing games, looking at you tube, and all the shit you’re not supposed to do with company PCs, but do anyway.

if you install shit on a computer, it will run slow.

Word processing, photo editing, in the long dark days of winter a bit of empire total war or similar and file storage, I work as the devil (independent estate agent) so lots of pictures.

As you don’t need the computer on the move, the only advantage of a laptop would be that you could use it at a desk, but also out in the garden/on the sofa/wherever around your house.

The downside of a laptop is that you will get less in terms of spec, meaning it is less future-proofed, it would be less cost-effective ( though certainly not impossible ) to repair and your ability to upgrade over time would practically be limited to more ram/hard drive.

If you go down the laptop route, then Lenovo and Dell have proved to be good, Thinkpad is an option if you want to spend more for a very well put together machine. Be aware with a laptop that if you buy in France/Germany/UK you’ll get the corresponding keyboard. French keyboards make me want to scream.

If you go for a desktop, I’d suggest going to the Dell Outlet or looking for whatever “new/other” status Dell suits your pocket on Ebay – a good way to save a bit of cash on what for all intents is a brand new machine.

Of course, there is a third way – a 17″ laptop with a nice screen – not something that you would carry around a lot, but neater than a desktop with separate screen. The Inspiron 17 has a lovely screen and you can get a kit to replace the optical drive with a 2nd hard drive, giving you a fast SSD drive for booting/running programs and a large hard drive for storing data.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Dell-Laptop-Inspiron-17-7746-17-3-Touch-Intel-i7-2-4GHz-16GB-NVIDIA-240-SSD-/222593893395?hash=item33d3a14413:g:KDYAAOSw2k9ZeIjh