My wife’s PC went Tango Uniform yesterday, and the cost for me to replace the processor chip is roughly the same as several Galaxy family tablets. If I decide to get her a tablet as a replacement, can a tablet map to a network drive for storage?
She has a lot of files on her PC that she would not want to lose.
I have a network HDD and it is visible to my Nexus 7 no problem. I can transfer files back and forth. There are various file manager solutions on the Google Play store (ES manager is one that I use)
Depends on what kind of tablet.
Make sure it’s not an Apple tablet.
A Microsoft tablet, at least the Surface Pro, definitely can-- it runs a full copy of Windows 8. The Surface RT… maaaybe? You’d better check before buying.
I don’t know anything about Android.
An Android tablet with a USB port should be able to use an external drive for backup storage (I have a Toshiba Thrive with a full-size USB port that accepts portable flash drives or external hard drive cables directly; most of them have mini-USB ports that will require a different cable).
Does this require a special setting or program? I’ve heard things about “USB Host Mode” and “USB On the Go” and I’m not sure what they are.
Another vote for the ES file explorer. You can use it to connect to and stream data from your shared network folders, NAS or FTP
What sort of processor chip were you looking at/replacing? If your wife can do what she needs on a tablet, there are certainly affordable options for getting a new CPU that don’t cost even as much as one Galaxy family tablet.
Are you certain her workload can make due with a tablet?
Tablets can be powerful, but they are still tiny devices that can be out muscled by any decent laptop, and even the lowliest desktop.
There are also very serious limitations to the kind of software you can run on them, as well as the power of said software.
Personally, I’d never give up a fully multi-tasking work environment, nevermind that photoshop and visual studio won’t run on a tablet, and even if they did, they would crawl.
Be certain that what she does can be done in a tablet environment, and that she has a chance to try it to make sure the experience is satisfactory.
Really, a tablet is seldom a good replacement for a laptop/PC except for the most casual of users.
My wife is quickly sliding into invalid status. Probably 80% of her time is spent web surfing, reading some hobby boards, or e-mail. Where the tablet potentially breaks down for this is either where she designs quilts or writes word processor quality stuff. I’m not sure she would get along with a virtual keyboard very well. Our cell phones have slide out physical keys.
Anyway, I’ve decided to fix her PC. She can get her own damned tablet out of her pocket anytime she wants. ETA: someone asked, the PC processor is an Intel E7500 Core 2. They start at $90 from Amazon.
How are you so sure that it’s the CPU that needs to be replaced?
I say this because in my experience it is quite rare for the CPU to die. Usually it is something else on the motherboard that goes bad.
Agreed. Unless you did something stupid it’s not the CPU that’s bad.
The processor fan now screams, so my assumption is that it, and the processor, toasted.
I haven’t yet devoted more than 20 minutes of troubleshooting to make a definitive diagnosis, FWIW.
Just keep in mind that tablets are good at viewing content, not so good at creating content.
Seems like your wife does more of the latter than the former, but to the extent the latter is important to her, a laptop may be better. Of course, if you want to pay more money, you can get a MS version can be either, depending on whether you dock it or not.
But don’t get her an Apple unless she’s familiar with iOS, as in having an iPhone. Think of an iPad as a giant iPhone that can’t make phone calls (except over the internet).
The processer will shut down before it fries. You probably just need a new fan.
More likely issues are that the CPU fan is broken, or the CPU cooler isn’t making contact with the CPU either because retention mechanism has broken or because the thermal compound is all but gone. Definitely try a new CPU fan & heatsink first. It appears that LGA775 has thermal protection so the CPU itself should probably be fine. The motherboard is probably more likely to be bad and causing whatever issues you have than the CPU is, if it isn’t the heatsink & fan.
Edit to add in 15 years of building & fixing computers I’ve never actually seen or known anyone with a bad CPU except via physical damage (broken pins, core broken off by heatsink on Socket A athlons).
I fried an Athlon once via a short caused by a wire touching the case.
The exact symptoms are that the system will not boot, not even to the extent of displaying the pre Windows load stuff; the monitor screen is completely blank save for the power save floater. The power buttons on both the base and the monitor display yellow instead of light blue, and the CPU fan screams. There is some dust inside, but not enough to cause thermal or short circuit issues.
If y’all still think the fan is the culprit, I’ll start there. Fans are cheaper than E7500 Core 2 modules…
ETA: Wife lets her box run 24/7, and the first time I opened it was when it crashed. No mods or mucking about inside caused the failure.
If it won’t boot, even for a second, even when you let it get good and cold (ie, leave it totally off for hours), then the CPU fan is probably not the issue. Either the CPU cooler is making no contact with the CPU at all, or something else is bad - probably the Motherboard, but it could be the power supply or RAM as well.
By “screaming” do you mean squealing or running at full speed? If it’s just full speed it’s not the fan. The most common problem would be the power supply.
It could be the power supply is providing really nasty power to the motherboard, but if that’s the problem there’s a good chance the motherboard’s shot anyway. (It doesn’t have much protection against bad power.) The CPU is also sensitive to bad power, but better protected than most other things the motherboard manages.
I’d suspect either the PSU or the disk controller. There’s a 99.9% chance your disk controller is built-in to the motherboard, so either way you look at it, a motherboard replacement is probably called for. If you know someone with equipment, have the PSU tested first-- don’t plug that PSU into a brand new motherboard until you know it’s ok.
The screaming fan is kind of a distraction from the real issue-- it’s screaming because absent any kind of control from the motherboard, fans will just run at their fastest RPM all the time. You usually see this when you first turn a computer on. The fans will quickly accelerate to their full RPM, then the motherboard initializes its fan controller and they slow back down to a more reasonable rate.