Any help here would be great as I have no idea about this kind of stuff. 😳

We’re looking for a new computer for home.
Price up to around £600ish.
Going to be used for email, general browsing, uploading photos to flickr and very basic gopro editing.

ATM we have a dell something or other that’s almost 9 years old and seems to be dying.

Anyone care to recomend me anything?
Links to it would be even betterer. 🙂

Do you really need a PC / Desktop? Why not buy a decent i3 or maybe and i5 15″ laptop and have a monitor you can plug it in to?

At least then you have some flexibility in how you use it rather than being sat in one room all the time.

Easily doable for <£600

The go-pro editing is the thing that will demand the spec depending on that rates you’re filming at / converting to. The rest you can do happily on a £300 laptop.

We don’t need to move it anywhere so seems a bit pointless buying a laptop.
Would we not get more for our money with a PC than with a laptop?

Only ever film in 720 on the gopro.
Just need to be able to trim the ends off and add music. I’m not wanting to do anything complicated.

Bookmarks thread as my desk top is behaving in a shonky manner.

Don’t want a laptop due to mapping software and I like to see the big picture.

Currently using Dell, I guess they’re all much of a muchness these days?

Some to get you going. Unless you need power / expansion or can repair your own machine / plan on upgrading I’d always go for a laptop over a desktop these days (Though I’m sat at a desktop right now as that’s got a nice 27″ IPS monitor attached).

This i7 is a bit overkill, and can read some computer geeks arguing over the minutiae of spec here, but a good choice. You can add more memory later if you’re not happy with the editing speed.

£299 for an i3 laptop makes this a bargain.

If space is an issue or you want to hide the PC case

Just add keyboard & mouse.

Great spec for the money.

Add a monitor (like the 27″ IPS on that same page, though you don’t need to spend that much), Windows 7 or 8 and a keyboard / mouse and speakers any you’re set.

On your “more for your money” question, you’re not really doing anything (gaming, rendering, VMs, Video editing (not trimming) etc) that would mean you see any of the benefit.

A large (27″) hi res / quality monitor would make a difference however.

Our home pc came from tier1online. Had no need for a super high spec,just something to do basically as the Op wanted, also to streams films etc, to the TV, use Skype, kids homework.

I like the sound of a 27″ monitor though.

Some to get you going. Unless you need power / expansion or can repair your own machine / plan on upgrading I’d always go for a laptop over a desktop these days

I’m going to respectfully disagree, for the following reasons:

Firstly, a PC will give you much more performance for the same money (or alternatively the same performance for less money). Secondly, a PC will be much more future proof than a laptop, since you can upgrade HDDs, optical drives, memory, et cetera (or replace them if they break). Thirdly (and anecdotaly), in my experience laptops can often become unreliable over time, notably at the hinge.

In summary, if you don’t need mobility, then a PC wins every time in my opinion.

To the OP – you’ll get a decent PC for much less than £600. Try here for starters.

Dell outlet store is my starting point

Thread becoming interesting and helpful. 8)

This i7 is hard to beat

http://www.aria.co.uk/SuperSpecials/Other+products/GLADIATOR+Intel+i7-4770+3.90GHz+Quad-Core+Next+Day+Desktop+PC+?productId=57494

3.9ghz quad core, with 4 virtual cores giving 8 threads of i7 power. Huge 16gb memory more than enough for video /photo editing.

On-cpu 4600 HD graphics, on the cpu itself, no bottleneck and unless gaming this will be very quick for videos etc.

Big 2tb harddrive for storage.

You’ll just need whichever version of Windows you decide on top.

or if you want more bang for buck look at the i5 quad core option, with 8gb memory

http://www.aria.co.uk/SuperSpecials/Other+products/GLADIATOR+Intel+i5-4570+Haswell+Quad-Core+Next+Day+Desktop+PC+?productId=58055

Cheers for all the help so far.
Anyone else feel free to add to this. 🙂

“Firstly, a PC will give you much more performance for the same money (or alternatively the same performance for less money).

Agree, thought the OP doesn’t really need performance it’s a bit of a moot point. Price wins, though the price of the i3 laptop is similar to most desktops.

Secondly, a PC will be much more future proof than a laptop, since you can upgrade HDDs, optical drives, memory, et cetera (or replace them if they break).

As the OP is on here asking for advice about what to buy I doubt they’ll do any of the above. Most laptops will allow you to upgrade Memory and Disk. CPU / GPU are usually the constraining items on a laptop and the things to take in to account when selecting.

“Thirdly (and anecdotaly), in my experience laptops can often become unreliable over time, notably at the hinge.”

This can be true, particularly with larger screen sizes, though I’ve only had that problem once on an (old) Evesham.

My point about the laptop with an extra monitor for desktop use is that you get the best of both worlds. Not saying it’s right for everyone and the OP has already said they don’t need the mobility which is why I’ve linked the 2x desktops from OC and Ebuyer above.

Dell outlet was pretty poor when I looked yesterday. Sure there’ll be some voucher codes along shortly.

On the Arias linked above, you’ll probably want to buy a new monitor, keyboard and mouse as well if your current ones are 9 years old (they don’t come with them).

Laptop is a ballache in the long term. Harder to fix. Only get one if you need the portability. A desktop computer you can replace parts more easily and keep using the existing. A decent case and psu will last a while.

Desktop parts are also tend to be cheaper and you stand a better chance of fixing yourself at home. For instance if your motherboard dies and you are out of warranty – laptop = ballache. Desktop new motherboard might be 50 quid or something.

Unless you need a mental amount of power you could do a lot worse than a prebuilt from Ebuyer and Novatech etc…

http://www.ebuyer.com/579783-zoostorm-desktop-pc-7873-1212

This might be the right time to think at your future needs for TV and music and get something that will stream Spotify, Netflix, Youtube and all that stuff in good quality to where you want it.

Crell.

Thanks for all your help but i really don’t want a laptop.

From what I’ve seen anecdotally I wouldn’t buy an i3, go for an i5 processor (or i7 if you have cash to splash), especially as you probably be pushed into buying it with Windows 8 (unless you know some-one with a Win7 disc and some spare license.. 😉 ). I always recommend Dell’s nowadays, simply because there cheap and reliable not like days of old. That said there some decent looking machines on ebuyer with no OS for not a lot of money. I’m not up on the latest hardware/prices, so I could be wrong but use it as a reference pont.

I know, that’s why I posted the desktops on the links. Just having a bit of a debate 🙂

Thinking of one of these.
http://www.dell.com/uk/p/inspiron-660/pd?oc=cd6604&model_id=inspiron-660

What do you think ?

Edit.
Just seen z1ppys post.
That’s a no from you then i take it?
What’s wrong with the i3 and windows 8?

You might not want mega performance now but once you get started on video editing you will soon. It’s addictive. i5 at least with as much ram as you can. Don’t go mad on disk space immediately as its the easiest part to upgrade. Set your budget and go to ebuyer as above. Good value and good service.

Who are ZooStorm? Take it they’re OK?

Who are ZooStorm

Don’t know where they came from, but my Zoostorm PC has been good. i5 with 8GB RAM. It has Windows 7 with the a licence and option for Windows 8, but don’t know if that’s still available. There were no original media when it arrived, a quick email and Zoostorm were very responsive and the discs arrived next day.

That ZooStorm looks pretty good deal. 🙂

I bought a zoostorm about 6 months ago, good headline price but didn’t include Windows which I was aware of but also didn’t include wifi or a sound card. Both issues easily rectified and still a bargain but worth double checking any specs to see what you don’t get as well as what you do get.

Any views on this?
http://www.dell.com/uk/p/xps-8700/pd?oc=cdx8729&model_id=xps-8700

That’s an OK spec but it doesn’t have a monitor – £255 extra from dell. Cheaper models are available for same spec elsewhere.

I’m aware of monitors being available at a much lower price ta. 😉
Or are you taking about the PC?

What do you think ?

Edit.
Just seen z1ppys post.
That’s a no from you then i take it?
What’s wrong with the i3 and windows 8?

Sorry I stepped away from the computer.. unusual I know but it is (or was) christmas. As I say from what I’ve seen (i3 laptops & desktops), they aren’t exactly fast or maybe “not as prompt as I’d expect” at times is a better description, from new, so give them 6 months and all the software that’ll get loaded, I believe they’ll be running annoyingly slow. That Dell i5 looks a very good spec, and as I say I tend to recommend Dells.. but a similar spec zoostorm is £429 . Surprised me, Dell is usually very competitive, but I’ve not looked into prices for a while

PS: Those PC’s on http://www.aria.co.uk/ above look to be spec even better for the money, but I can’t see that they include an OS on any of their system (glancing through quickly). Though they do sell Win 7 Home premium separately for £70

I would stay away from dell. Lots or dell specific bits esp motherboards and power supplies.
A decent prebuilt system from aria, cclonline, overclockers etc will be much better.
For your needs its the gopro footage that will hammer your processor. I have an AMD equivalent to the i5 with 16gb rmemory…and editing gopro and encoding for output takes power!
For you I would go for an I5 or AMD equivalent, with a £50 graphics card and 8gb memory.
As said above, a nice keyboard, mouse and screen make a big difference, and you will have them for a long time!

Something like this…..

http://www.cclonline.com/product/103124/NoMfgCode/All-CCL-Desktops/CCL-Alpha-Transcendence-PC/CCL-ALP-EXT/

£500 gets you a mac mini , ok you need to add a mouse , keyboard and monitor but you might already have these.

I have mine connected to my 42″ TV in the front room with a logitech keyboard with built in trackpad

Not for everyone but it’s a very capable machine and silent

If spending circa £600 and want windows in the price, this 6 core gaming pc gets a load of awards

http://www.aria.co.uk/Systems/Gaming+Range/Award-winning+Gaming+PCs/Gladiator+FX+Predator+650Ti+Boost+FX-6300+4.10GHz+Gaming+PC+?productId=55341