Looking for Desktop PC recommendations.
For my Mom. She’s 81, but quite savy.
A terabyte at least and 6gb of RAM. The usual stuff such as a DVD burner. A couple of USB ports on front. She would like to have a TV tuner in it as well.
Does not need to be a gaming class machine.
I’m looking at the Dell XPS 7100 for my Mom.
Thoughts?
Dell XPS stuff is nice. What do you need 6 GB of RAM for? I’m thinking anything that’d require that much RAM probably has a CPU requirement too. I dunno how a X6 1045T does. It’s always a pain figuring out those OEM chips.
A 1TB HDD is a bit of overkill unless she has loads of movies etc. that she needs to store on it. 6GB RAM also seems a bit excessive, what does she do with the PC, is it just email/internet or is she into video processing?
In my experience there isn’t much to choose between manufacturers. They all buy their hardware from the same people you are really just deciding who you are going to pay to screw it together for you. The other deciding factor is the quality and length of warranty, Dell tech support is good but you usually pay a premium for Dell machines. I usually just go for whatever is the best deal at the time.
Terabyte drives are pretty cheap - most are under $100.
I would get 4 2gig sticks of memory (each module looks like 1/3 of an index card and fits into slots on the mobo) for 8 gig. The more memory you have, the less virtual memory will be needed. That means less swapping of memory out to the page file. Since the page file is on the hard disk and that is much slower than ram, the more you have to use virtual memory, the slower the machine will be.
Overall speed will be affected primarily by the speed of the CPU and the amount of memory. The speed of the memory also matters, but less than the overall quantity. So if it is a choice between DDR2-1600 but only 2 x 2gigabyte sticks for a total of 4 gig OR DDR2-1333 but 4 x 2 gig, then definitely get the bigger chunk of slower memory.
I would stick with DDR2 rather than DDR3 dram. DDR2 is being phased out but is very cheap right now. DDR3 tends to be faster overall but has higher latency (the number of cpu clock cycles you have to wait until the first block of data is returned to the cpu). You should probably check the latency numbers for the memory. For DDR2, don’t take anything that more than CAS 5. For DDR3 don’t take anything more than CAS 9. The 5 and 9 are the number of cycles required for the CAS memory operation.
I think a quad core should be more than adequate for her needs. I wouldn’t pay extra for a hex core.
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Since this thread is seeking opinions, I’ve moved it from General Questions to In My Humble Opinion.
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Thanks Gary.
And everyone else. Yeah, 6gb and 1tb is pretty much for what she uses it for, but as has been said, it’s cheap.
Also, we tend to keep our machines for a pretty long time. Having the terabyte up front would be nice. And she is scanning a whole bunch of pictures.
How about one of the Zotac Zboxes?
I’ll take a look when I have time this evening.
Those are all based on the Intel Atom chip and top out at 1.8ghz apparently. The base Athlon II X4 is 2.8ghz. And personally, I would go with the Phenom 945 if it isn’t much more expensive. I haven’t seen any head to head comparisons but the 2.8ghz chip should be noticeably faster and probably has more on board L1, L2 and L3 cache. This also makes for a much faster system.
They’re both good choices depending on cost constraints and the desired level of performance. Even so, for $500 I don’t think you can go wrong with the Dell system.
That’s probably not an issue in this case. But the form factor may be very suitable.
Thanks again for the advice.
Here is the SITREP. My Moms machine is partitioned for 13gb for the operating system. XP pro. But it’s filling up. I can’t get online remotely to really look at this machine. But I have talked my mom through moving or deleting anything that does not belong there. Still, it is pushing the limits and she only has about 20mb left on that partition. If that (after cleaning it up. Hidden files, logs, sort by size files everything I can think of).
I suspect that Norton is saving updates to that partition. MS may be doing the same. There may be the backup of XP on that partition as well.
13gb is more than enough for XP pro, but it keeps filling up.
Mom has about 250gb free on the other partition. Storage.
So… I down loaded Partition Magic and successfully repartitioned XPpro on my home machined last night. I can talk my mom though it. Stick another 5gb on her op system partition.
I am hesitant because of my Dad. He partitions his drive by 10 or 15. And he is ALWAYS having problems. I keep telling him to stop such nonsense, and leave well enough alone. But he won’t. For some reason, he has to buy a new computer about once a year.
While mom will need a new computer in a year or two (she is scanning a bunch of old slides (she is not saving them to the operating system partition) I think it would be good to just open up operating partition by 5gb or so.
Thoughts about Partition Magic or any other software are welcome and appreciated.
Since W7 has the ability to resize partitions, I haven’t used partitioning software much. I didn’t know partition magic was still around. I would recommend Acronis Disk Director (home version might have a different name). This is a different product than Acronis True Image, so make sure that you’re looking at the right product.
Paragon software also has a partitioning utility I think.
Both will have features beyond what W7 offers but I honestly can’t remember what they are.
I would strongly advise using a ups if you are repartitioning and you don’t have a backup of both partitions on the drive. In fact, the idea of repartitioning when there is the chance of losing pictures or other important files freaks me out a little to be honest.
Have you tried CCleaner. Maybe you could have her run this on a daily basis until you can get everything backed up. It might free up enough space to make the system usable until you can do the repartitioning.
Just make sure it ships with Win 7 64bit instead of 32bit, else about half of that 6GB of RAM won’t be seen by Windows. I imagine Dell ships all it’s systems with a 64bit Windows these days though.
The 7100 has a broad range of specs, what do you have picked out?
I don’t know why your mother configured the system with such a small partition. I’d have made it 50 or 100GB.
I’ll agree with others that 13 GB is far too low these days.
How about Temporary Internet Files?
What about %temp%?
Are there any other profiles on the drive?
Is there a D: drive? How much space is there?
Are there service pack uninstall files that you can remove?
You can move the paging file to D: - just be sure to leave a 2 MB paging file on C:
Talking someone through doing this over the phone is fraught with danger. Don’t even think about doing this without a full backup.
Instead of repartitioning, you might consider using Symlinks with the MKLINK command.
I would use CCleaner to remove all but the latest system restore point as well, they can take up a large chunk of the drive if you let them.
They are cheap these days you just need to be careful that you don’t get lumbered with a ‘media’ drive that only spins at 5400rpm. Sometimes manufacturers will ship PCs with a huge but slow drive for the same price as a smaller but faster drive, I would go for small and fast every time.
Thanks again everyone. I will check out a few other of the options recommended. No temp internet files, and I had her move all .msi files to the D: partition.
I understand how difficult it is to talk people through computer problems over the phone. Been doing it for 20 years with my Mom and Dad. Unfortuantly, with my satellite, remote conection really isn’t an option. I pretty much replicate everything on my machine as I talk them through it.
Anywho, mom has about 180gb free on the partitioned hard drive. Not much. My mother did not partion the 13gb for the op system. It was either my brother or Sony.
Everything important is backed up. I’m a little worried about trying to get my mom to repartition by talking to her though it. But, I will be folowing/directing step by step as I repartition a machine of my own. And, we comunicate well.
Here is a recent review of a ZBox.