Hi all, my 5 year old laptop is taking so long to do anything that I've realised that it's time for a new PC. Although I can bore people endlessly about minor technical differences between Dura Ace and Ultegra STIs, PCs are a whole new world, and I'm feeling a bit lost. I just need something that lets me look at bike forums, buy stuff off Chain Reaction etc, play my music, and run TrainingPeaks. Oh, and a bit of work-from-home stuff using MS Office.

I think a desktop PC this time rather than another laptop. What should I look for? Are there any good deals going on at the moment? All advice is gratefully received… feel free to ask bike geek component questions in return 🙂

iMac – thread closed.

On a serious note – depends on your budget. How long do you want sed machine to last you?

I've been very pleased with my Medion. It seemed to be very good value for the money. They often come up at Aldi, but you need to be quick cos they sell like hotcakes. Mine was about £500.

I get most of my systems and gear from here;

http://www.ebuyer.com/store/Computer/cat/Desktop-PC

Depends what your doing with it. If it's Internet and office stuff, re-instal the oprating system on your laptop, or even look at the alternative light weight OS's. If your doing heavy photo and video editing that's a different matter. Either get some advice on components and build your self (if you can maintain a bike without too much bother and can read and follow instructions it's really very easy) or get down to your local independent computer shop and get them to do it

Or get a mac

"What PC" is very much, "what bike." So many variables, what are you using it for, what do you like, what's your budget, etc etc.

Best generic advice I can give, in the absense of anything else to go on, is to stick with 'brand' names and avoid shop home-brands and mongrel builds. Reasons being a) build quality and b) considerably less pain when you have to rebuild it in two years' time. Much like a bike I suppose. You'll not go far wrong with any HP/Compaq, Dell, IBM, Toshiba, anything like that.

Spec wise, get a proper processor (ie, avoid Celerons and suchlike) but don't sweat too much about raw speed, they're all quick these days. Get as much RAM as you can afford – I'd be looking at 3Gb as a minimum these days – as this will have the single biggest perfomance impact for your money. Get a discreet graphics card, doesn't have to be the biggest in the world unless you're a gamer, but this onboard graphics / shared memory business has been universally rubbish forever.

Oh – if you want, I'm not adverse to dialing in to your laptop for you and seeing if I can speed it up a bit. It's part of what I do for a living.

iMac – thread closed.

😆

It's funny because it's true.

Another vote for fixing your current laptop. Your needs don't sound too demanding. A little more RAM and a fresh OS install should do it.

Thanks 🙂

I did think about reinstalling the OS… will this help, or do computers degrade in some way and get slower with age?

Aldi has some Medions on their website, so I'm looking at the Akoya laptop, or maybe the HD version, any advice about which one to go for?

Over time the Operating System can get bogged down with stuff you've installed & stuff that runs automatically at startup. And virii, maybe. An OS reinstall may help. Make sure you save all your stuff first.
Before you go that way though…

Hard drives in particular can degrade with age (a) as the files become fragmented over time and (b) the drive can physically degrade making the data harder to read.

Assuming XP open My Computer, right click on C:, Properties, Tools, Error checking, Check now & tick both boxes. Restart & let it do it's thing.
Any errors reported?

Try running the disk defragmenter a couple of times with a reboot inbetween.

If there were no errors and the defrag made no difference have a look in Device Manager under Disk Drives to identify the make of your hard drive, then go to their website and download the disk diagnostic software. Run that.

If your machine is still slow and no problems were found then a reinstall may help

Cougar – some onboard graphics like a 780G+ onwards have HD3200 which is fine for surfing, playing games on low settings and 1080i blue ray no probs and he's only using a dual core 7780 3.0 ghz cpu.

Some new boards have a 48** HD Ati onboard.

My old man had Burnout Paradise City running great (GPU 600mhz) but now he's hooked on gaming he will be buying a 5*** series card soon so he can max it out and a better cpu.

He was on a budget too.

Another vote for a clean re-install. The question is, is it something demanding you're trying to do (video editing etc.) which is really slow, or just normal stuff like browsing, and MS Office? By the sounds of things the latter – in which case a 5 year old laptop should be able to cope fine (the computer I'm typing on is rather older than that and no such problems here). That and a bit more RAM as also suggested will likely transform the perfomrance.

If you are determined to get a new one, then I'd say pretty much the opposite of Cougar – shop brand custom builds are generally far better value than ones from brands, the former also having the advantage that the stuff inside will generally be branded rather than the proprietary "own brand" stuff you can get with branded PCs which can make upgrading an issue. Also nothing wrong with Celeron processors if they hit your price point and your needs are undemanding (as yours seem to be). The same goes for onboard integrated graphics – you only really need dedicated cards if you're playing games or doing fancy graphical stuff.

Thanks again for the replies everyone!! I've error checked the hard disc (nothing) and am currently running a defrag (thanks JP). I'll reinstall the OS later, and if that doesn't work, I've had a word with a mate who will custom build a new PC for me.

He said that the spec will be better than I'll get in the shop by focussing on what I need (ie no additional graphics card, no need as I'm not gaming), and I like the idea of having something built by a friend rather than bought off the peg.

I've had a word with a mate who will custom build a new PC for me.

In return I suggest you can do the mate a favour by not then pestering him with every little problem the PC has. As a techy person there's nothing worse than helping someone out once, only for them to assume any issues after are your fault/that you'll help them when they're stuck.

I'd never build a PC for a friend/family member for this reason (though I would help them build their own)…

In return I suggest you can do the mate a favour by not then pestering him with every little problem the PC has

Amen to that brother 😀 !