[Z4 Beemer]

Originally Posted by silverbmwz3

E92Fan, it makes complete sense. Probably because I work in IT as I mentioned earlier but also read PCPro and a bit of an enthusiast so knew most of it already. I just wasn't sure how well Vista ran on mac hardware - e.g. any PC games I wanted to play, it seems unlikely they'd work with full graphics etc. etc. Also that one button mouse thing, I like to right click!!!

I have the wireless mighty mouse and you can configure it for 3 buttons actually. It detects whether you are pressing at the left or right side of the mouse and the ball on top can act as a 3rd button (if you need it for X applications).

[peterg1965]

Originally Posted by silverbmwz3

Peter> The Mesh looks good however I'd still say it seems similar spec so it appears you are trying to find a computer to fit a price rather than buying a computer to fit needs. Is that fair comment?

I've actually got a Mesh after all my shouting about Dell. It's been fine. The reason is simple - they had the best spec for the price (bang/buck) when I bought. Lots of bad feedback on Mesh customer service in the past at pcadvisor.co.uk however apparently they've turned a bit of a corner on that. 9 times out of 10 you'd get a good one anyway but some horror stories from when people didn't.

I still think you could get the PC you need from Dell for about 650 quid.

Silver, you are probably right, finding the machine to fit the budget! However, if that budget brings a very high spec that is relatively future proof (at least for the next 3/4 years) then it is probably worth paying a bit extra. The 4Gb of RAM appears tempting over the 'standard' 2Gb and that in itself must account for £100 or so. Just a couple of years or so ago it seemed rare to see a 'budget' machine with 1Gb of RAM now 2Gb is fairly common (for Vista I suspect) so going for a 4Gb PC seems to me to be a way of guaranteeing a bit of currency for the next few years. The Mesh machine looks good to me, I reckon I might give it a go (for my son of course )

[E92Fan]

Originally Posted by vivekk

Paul, I was a 'mere' PC boy, until I bought the Macbook, last year.

I've always used PCs & having got used to them, I thought the Mac would be just too 'different', but I'm glad to say it really doesn't matter.

The Macs really are 'personal' computers- you can put you 'life' on them & it treats that with the care & compassion that you would!

If you've got a separate PC & a Mac, you can share files across a network without any problem. I now tend to edit graphics, audio & video on the Mac & get the PC to do the mundane 'slave' tasks of compression, storage & uploading!

They never fight with each other, mainly because they both know who's Boss!

I'll probably get the iMac 24" once the new OS X Leopard has been released, mainly because I'm in no particular rush, just yet.

I'll keep the PC & I'll probably still keep using it, but the iMac will be my new 'plaything'!

All the best.

Viv

Who's Paul??!!

[SoYank]

Originally Posted by peterg1965

Software Bundle

Microsoft Office 2007 Professional (fully functional 60 day trial)
Windows Vista Home Premium Recovery Disk and Documentation
Nero 7 Essentials
Power DVD
Power Producer
Acrobat Reader 7
Norton Anti Virus (60 day trial)

What do they mean by the "fully functional 60 day trial" for the Microsoft Office 2007? Does that mean you have to buy it separately after the 60 day period?

Here's what you really need - a 26Gflop microcomputer: http://www.calvin.edu/~adams/research/microwulf/

Well, you did ask for alternate suggestions.

[peterg1965]

Originally Posted by SoYank

What do they mean by the "fully functional 60 day trial" for the Microsoft Office 2007? Does that mean you have to buy it separately after the 60 day period?

Here's what you really need - a 26Gflop microcomputer: http://www.calvin.edu/~adams/research/microwulf/

Well, you did ask for alternate suggestions.

Thanks for that. Microsoft Office 2007 (student) is about £85 with a licence for 3 computers so I would buy seperately after the 'free' 60 day trial!

[vivekk]

Originally Posted by E92Fan

Who's Paul??!!

Sorry Tony!

Although I was referring to silver's words about the iMac!

Viv

[E92Fan]

Originally Posted by silverbmwz3

E92Fan, it makes complete sense. Probably because I work in IT as I mentioned earlier but also read PCPro and a bit of an enthusiast so knew most of it already. I just wasn't sure how well Vista ran on mac hardware - e.g. any PC games I wanted to play, it seems unlikely they'd work with full graphics etc. etc. Also that one button mouse thing, I like to right click!!!

As has been said already, you can have three buttons! And as for the graphics, on the topline iMacs they use an ATI Radeon 2600 PRO graphics card - for all the non-nerds out there, it's the new generation of graphics card which can do full 3D, HDTV Highdef DVD, blu-ray decoding etc etc... it's damn quick and makes my old NVidia Geforce 7800 look slow. Granted, there are faster cards out there, but spending £300-400 on a graphics card just for games is um... worrying!! That's almost 75% of a one-year unlimited pass to the Nurburgring!!!

[silverbmwz3]

Originally Posted by peterg1965

Silver, you are probably right, finding the machine to fit the budget! However, if that budget brings a very high spec that is relatively future proof (at least for the next 3/4 years) then it is probably worth paying a bit extra. The 4Gb of RAM appears tempting over the 'standard' 2Gb and that in itself must account for £100 or so. Just a couple of years or so ago it seemed rare to see a 'budget' machine with 1Gb of RAM now 2Gb is fairly common (for Vista I suspect) so going for a 4Gb PC seems to me to be a way of guaranteeing a bit of currency for the next few years. The Mesh machine looks good to me, I reckon I might give it a go (for my son of course )

Peter, I'm an enthusiast and also an IT professional. I'm running vista with 1GB of RAM and having no trouble whatsover with it. You just WON'T use 4GB of RAM. Fact (based on what you've told us about usage) 2GB will be absolutely fine and you can always add another 1 or 2 if you feel the need later, but I'm fairly certain you won't.

Future proof how? There won't, to my knowledge, be a new O/S out in the next 3/4 years and you said your son doesn't play games (I believe) so what exactly are you futureproofing against ? You'll still presumably be surfing and web browsing on it in 3/4 years time the same?!

Go for the Mesh if you like it, I was just trying to save you a few hundred quid without, in reality, losing anything. I think you'd already pretty much decided what spec and money before you asked

[silverbmwz3]

Originally Posted by E92Fan

As has been said already, you can have three buttons! And as for the graphics, on the topline iMacs they use an ATI Radeon 2600 PRO graphics card - for all the non-nerds out there, it's the new generation of graphics card which can do full 3D, HDTV Highdef DVD, blu-ray decoding etc etc... it's damn quick and makes my old NVidia Geforce 7800 look slow. Granted, there are faster cards out there, but spending £300-400 on a graphics card just for games is um... worrying!! That's almost 75% of a one-year unlimited pass to the Nurburgring!!!

So...I could play PC games on it and also I can right click with a proper mouse in windows on it?! Why would anyone buy a PC ?

[E92Fan]

Originally Posted by silverbmwz3

So...I could play PC games on it and also I can right click with a proper mouse in windows on it?! Why would anyone buy a PC ?

Because most people have no idea that you can run Vista properly on a Mac!

[ShereKhan]

Peter

You may find a Western Digital HDD or Samsung to be quieter. Hitachi ones seem to quite noisy in normal use.

I usually stay away from dell etc as I prefer to build the PC myself with the bits I want like 8 USB ports 5 HDD's and the firewire 800 interface.

[Serjames]

you know I'd actually miss BSODs

I love my PC, I love researching and choosing the parts. I love having them delivered in, I love putting the components together, I LOVE squeezing parts that SHOULDN'T be compatable together and I LOVE that first press of the power switch...

I can understand the allure of the mac....

But I'd really MISS the tinkering... having said that I do have a tendancy for fiddling (fnar) so I think PC's suit me better

I'm running two 500gb Drives in Raid 0 partitioned for the swap file, video collection and MP3s and a raptor 180gb for the OS and games etc

An Nvidia 7950GT Graphics card with a passive heatsink modded to interface directly with the case.

DVD drive etc...

4 GB fast ram running Overclock (ras 10 !) all squeezed into a Shuttle PC case - gotta love small form factor.

It's 12months old, but I reackon will be good for AT LEAST 12 months more

SJ

[dxb335d]

i thinmk i have 2gb on vista? how can i tell??

cant play test drive unlimited, was too slow

[peterg1965]

start - control panel - system ... it will tell you there how much RAM you have.

[NFS]

Originally Posted by peterg1965

[COLOR="Blue"]Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 3GHz 1333FSB Socket 775 4MB Cache Processor
4GB 800MHz DDR2 Ultrafast Kingston RAM
500GB SATA II Hitachi Desk Star Hard Drive 16MB Cache
nVidia 7300GT 512MB PCI-E Graphics Card
Designer ATX Gaming Case with multiple cooling fans
LG Dual 18x DVD/RW DL RAM Dual Layer ReWriter
500W ATX Switching Power Supply
6 USB2 ports (2 front, 4 back)
22 inch LCD Multimedia Monitor
Black PS2 Keyboard and Mouse
Multimedia 2.1 Channel Speaker Set
Genuine Windows 64 bit Vista Premium
1 year return to base warranty

E6850 is a superb processor, but the video card (7300GT) is weak. If your son wants to do any gaming at 1680x1050 definition it would need to be upgraded.

Originally Posted by peterg1965

Intel® Core™ 2 Quad Q6600 Quad Core Processor(2.4GHz,8MB Cache,1066MHz)
Genuine Windows Vista™ Home Premium Edition
Midi-Tower ATX Case +550W PSU -Black/Silver
PCI-Express Mainboard - SLI nForce 650i SLI(C55) - Intel Core 2 Duo/Quad-Core - ATX
4GB DDR2 667MHz Memory ( 4 x 1GB Samsung)
500GB Serial ATA Hard Drive with 16MB Buffer
LightScribe Super Format 18x Dual Layer DVD Writer +R/-R/RW/RAM
256MB nVIDIA GeForce 8500 GT - DVI, HDTV, TV-Out
22" Widescreen LCD TFT Digital Display with internal speakers (DVI, 5ms)
5.1 High Definition onboard sound card - 6 Channel Cinema sound
Logitech Cordless Keyboard & Cordless Optical Mouse
Free Microsoft® Works® 8.5 + 60 Days Microsoft Office Trial
Free Cyberlink Video Editing Suite - 7 titles (oem)
1x IEEE1394 Firewire (onboard)
1x Gigabit LAN (onboard)
Multi-format Memory Card Reader
Silver - 1 Year On Site Service - UK Mainland Only (Home Service)

Again - very good processor - although dual core can be a better option than quad still since quad core is only fast if the applications running use it's full potential. Motherboard is also bang up to date.

If you can find the e6850 from the first machine, but with an 8800 gts graphics card then you are laughing.




Again the video card is a bit weak. The first number for the Nvidea cards is the generation and the latter digits indicate it's ability. GT, GTS, GTX generally indicates better performace.

So the 8500GT is better than a 7300GT, but not as good as a 7900GT

[peterg1965]

Ok, have bought the MESH. Will be delivered 29th Sep. Question re Vista. does it automatically find the updated Vista drivers for the peripherals; ie webcam, printer, digital camera etc? Another stupid question, I have Orange Broadband with the LiveBox, I am sure that the software CD will not have a Vista driver on it so how do I get online when I set the PC up? Just plug in the Ethernet cable and pray?

[NFS]

Originally Posted by peterg1965

Ok, have bought the MESH. Will be delivered 29th Sep. Question re Vista. does it automatically find the updated Vista drivers for the peripherals; ie webcam, printer, digital camera etc? Another stupid question, I have Orange Broadband with the LiveBox, I am sure that the software CD will not have a Vista driver on it so how do I get online when I set the PC up? Just plug in the Ethernet cable and pray?

I'm not on Vista yet, so not sure about the first bit.

Vista will almost certainly be pre-installed on the PC, so the 'ethernet network adapter' will already be configured. When you plug in the ethernet cable it should pick up the LAN straight away, no drivers required.

It's a nice PC by the way.

[NFS]

Originally Posted by dxb335d

i thinmk i have 2gb on vista? how can i tell??

cant play test drive unlimited, was too slow

Too slow a driver ?

I play test drive unlimited ... what kind of PC are you trying to run it on ?

[E92Fan]

Originally Posted by peterg1965

Ok, have bought the MESH. Will be delivered 29th Sep. Question re Vista. does it automatically find the updated Vista drivers for the peripherals; ie webcam, printer, digital camera etc? Another stupid question, I have Orange Broadband with the LiveBox, I am sure that the software CD will not have a Vista driver on it so how do I get online when I set the PC up? Just plug in the Ethernet cable and pray?

Yes you'll find that Vista will find most of the drivers for the basic things like webcam, printer etc. However, it is worth browsing the peripherals' manufacturers sites to see if they have updated drivers - especially the graphics card as this can make a big difference.

Vista will automatically configure the Ethernet port so you can just plug in your modem and it will work. Provided obviously that the modem still has your login data stored on it, which it will unless you reset it. Before you switch on your computer, plug the modem in. That way s Vista is setting itself up, it can start downloading all the necessary updates (there's about 200Mb to download which it will do automatically)