Evening.

Went into pc world yesterday to look at what they had and maybe get a bit of advice. Turns out all the staff were able to do was read the lables infront of the machines and say look online…. mr gumby does sales!
so where Oh wise IT bods of stw can I go for some real and useful advice on a new pc.?

cheers

What do you want from the PC?

Luck of the draw when you go into PC world I think. You get the odd store that has someone there that loves what they do and know their stuff. We went into out local one on Sat after a desktop, cracking fella and well informed.

For me its photo editing mainly, usual surfing and streaming video etc, and possibly some gaming for mrsvader its all the usual house accounting, online banking type stuff, watching emotionally crippling american drama box sets on Netflix, for minivader, using the school online learning stuff, playing games on cbeebies website and any I can download like sodding angry birds and watching stuff on YouTube. I would ideally like a touchscreen as everything minivader uses (including the whiteboards at school) are touchscreenso Iit seems like the best option….

A proper computer shop? You probably need to know what you want though.

PCs are basically a commodity item. If you were into gaming or CAD or fancy video editing or colour calibration for design work, you’d already know any unusual specs you need. Hence buy the one you like the look of/feel of the keyboard/colour of the case. 4GB of ram should do, 500GB hard drive should be OK too. Most PCs will do all you asked, some netbooks would struggle, not sure about chromebooks. SSD(a mock hard drive made of fancy memory) certainly boosts load times.

@daftvader – quite a shopping list. Do you want a laptop or a desktop machine, how do you watch (or want to) the tv type stuff ? Gaming is a bit open ended as some of the latest stuff needs pretty high tech hardware.

I am sure there will be a pc equivalent at lower price but as I’m a fully signed up Apple boy here is “their” solution

iPad (£450-ish) for most of basic stuff, YouTube etc lots of fun games
Apple TV (£100) for streaming stuff onto the tv either from web (inc YouTube, netflix etc) or from your computer
MacMini (£500 or less second hand) connected to your existing screen/keyboard/mouse as your desktop machine, can run more complex games but not the most graphic intensive

This solution means multi users so everyone is happy.

OR

MacBook pro (£1200) and connect it to tv with hdmi out for watching stuff on big screen – you can definitely do this with a windows laptop for half this price too. Letting junior get hold of a MacBook might not be smart as he/she may abuse it.

For your requirements, set a budget, go to http://www.dell.co.uk, choose a computer (it won’t matter which one!). Done.

Truly, it’s the easy way.

+1 for the dell route and once you have chosen try the outlet store for a better price on refurb/cosmetic damage kit.

Probably cheaper than the walk into an apple store with an empty credit card option 🙂

Look at things like Raspberry Pi/XBMC if you want a dedicated TV streaming device.

Pick something with room for expansion too (desktop if you go that way)
Easy to add more RAM/drives later as needed and even upgrade processor.

I want a desktop, not laptop. Have had the designs for the spare room approved… Majority of tv stuff will be streamed through the br player but I can’t stand most of what she watches so one of us will be at the pc when the new series is ordered…. try watching 2 episoded of bloody Castle back to bloody back, she will do a box set in 1 sitting if she has the time…Already have a tablet and my gaming is on the xbox anyway.

We’ve purchased from these people on a couple of occasions and service has never been anything but super-speedy; currently offering a well-specified i5 23″ touchscreen for £650, and have lots of other deals on “ordinary” desktops.

http://www.dell.com/uk/business/p/desktops-n-workstations.aspx?c=uk&l=en&s=bsd&~ck=mn#!facets=40186~0~3778513&p=1
http://outlet.euro.dell.com/Online/InventorySearch.aspx?brandId=1&c=uk&cs=ukdfh1&l=en&s=dfh

@daft, ok in that case just get a standard desktop (eg as above from Dell) but splash out on a decent screen £100 these days buys you a 23 or £300 for a 27