Desktop upgrade

Have a look at the Dell Vostro range, currently with free delivery. Have a play with the Customise options, because form some reason the same spec machine can often be built-up by customising a base level model for £50 cheaper than picking the off-the-shelf version.

Don't buy extra memory from Dell. It's never worth it. Crucial will sell you the memory upgrade for you to install yourself (30 second job) for a fraction of the price Dell charge. Likewise, if onboard graphics is good enough to get you started you can always add a graphics card later. The basic HDD option (500GB) can be easily upgraded when required, there's room for a pair of HDD and an m-SATA slot.

A Vostro 470 i5 works out about £430, an i7 about £600 (prices inc. VAT & free delivery - use the voucher code on the i7). You need to enter the Small Business section of the Dell website to see these. The only difference between that section and the Home section is that prices are ex-VAT. Dell don't care if you're a business or not, but the Vostro range isn't marketed to Home customers.

Don't forget to apply the coupon $9S0HK87TNSC0Z if it applies..
 
srichards said:
Most of the above I've had in one way or another for 10 years. That's what I mean. It's revisions of the same.
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Revisions of the same.... Yes. In the same way that a modern TV is just a revision of Logie Bairds original TV. Still shows pictures and makes a sound, but infinitely more advanced now than it was "back in the day".

I think if you were put back in 1993 technology land, you'd soon see the advances that have been made.
 
I was thinking more since 2005/2006. 1993 was a clunky world.

Quality of tv programming hasn't improved as much as the resolution though :)

1993 tv was SD and had nicam stereo sound. It wasn't that bad if you had decent reception. At least the picture didn't have jaggies or stutter with fast action like low bit rate digital does.
 
srichards said:
Quality of tv programming hasn't improved as much as the resolution though :)
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Todays word is quantity not quality ;)

srichards said:
1993 tv was SD and had nicam stereo sound.
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As was all TV until switchover if you didn't have a digital box ;) Depending on where you live, that could be a few weeks ago when London was the last to switch :D

If you wanted to be really 1970's, you could still get Teletext until then too...

As to low bitrate SD channels (and you will find the box used will have an impact there as the lower the bitrate, the more likely you are to have a reduced spatial resolution so the box has to scale the output before it gets sent to the TV)... Does anyone actually watch them? :D
 
I noticed the lower bitrate and stuttering on Sky the most. Some of their channels were awful. It was often noticeable on motorsport on normal channels which was disappointing. Ondigital was also bad. That went off in high pressure weather. The sky one went off in the rain. I had both at one point. Analogue carried on regardless of the weather! I had a very nice nicam decoder so I was spoiled with decent picture and sound. Digital was often the poorer in both.

I spent some time buying into the latest and greatest and it just wasn't a lot of the time. Hence my cynical outlook today :)

Finally remembered something useful software wise that I didn't have until recently. Delicious library which uses barcodes scanned via isight to scan in your books, cds, dvds etc.
 
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arad85 said:
Yup. i5-2400 or i5-2500 (depending on price) + 8GBytes and 64bit Windows. You're unlikely to find a pre-built at a reasonable price with an SSD pre-installed, but it is relatively easy to do yourself (especially if you do it before you start using the machine so have a re-install needed). It also helps to have the OS media too if you can get it (dell charge £5 for it - well worth it IMHO).
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How straightforward is the SSD swap for the OS, Andy?

I have an i5-2400 Vostro 470 MT on order from Dell at the moment, nothing fancy as I'll upgrade memory, extra hdd, perhaps gfx card, etc myself. From the specs there's a spare mSATA connection which appears to be the unloved SSD option and not much use for anything else.
 
Alastair said:
How straightforward is the SSD swap for the OS, Andy?
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I always try and buy my PCs with the media if available. When the thing arrives, I just wipe the disk and install the OS - getting rid of any "added value" software the manufacturer has installed. For win 7, there are legitamate places to download the OS from. If you didn't get an OS disk, I'd be tempted to do this and do a complete re-install. Whether that reinstall is to the supplied disk or an SSD is pretty immaterial....

Unfortunately, you can't just copy the disk. The only other way of doing it "easily" is using system restore to make a backup of the disk and then restoring the backup to the SSD. It's actually quite easy as long as you can get the partition you are saving from smaller than the SSD you want to install to (google "replace HDD with SSD" for some clues how to do this).

Let me put it this way. I've replaced my HDD in the laptop (750G) with a 256G SSD. It took 20 minutes to shrink the partition (after googling - I'd never done it before) to a small enough size, 1 hour to back it up to an external USB drive, 10 minutes to swap disks and anther hour or so to restore the SSD from the HDD backup. Other than the fact it is lightning fast now, you wouldn't know I'd changed anything. All accounts/apps/settings were retained.
 
Thanks Andy.. the laptop swap sounds like something for the future - as well as a processor upgrade for stills and video (desktop) I badly need more every day hdd space on the work laptop (T7500 with just a 160Gb HD - presumably moving to a larger SSD from a smaller HDD is easier?).

Based on your earlier comment I made sure I added the media disk (£10 now from Dell, or maybe that's because it's Win7Pro?).

If I understand you correctly, for the new desktop it's as simple as unplugging and removing the old HDD (or formatting it in situ), plugging an SSD (this one?) into the mSATA and then booting from the OS disk?
 
I'd just reinstall. You may need to search Dells support pages for support of any accelerator keys (the sort that bring up a web browser when you press them) but that's about it. You shouldn't need to unplug the HDD as the SSD will go in as well - although sometimes Windows install does want to install itself across drives(!). Certainly it won't hurt to unplug the SATA cable to the HDD just whilst you install Windows.

As to the laptop HDD swap a T7500 is a bit long in the tooth now - especially when you're looking at £200+ to get a 256GB SSD. Can work not get you another laptop - with an SSD? That's what I've just changed to here (typing on a HP EliteBook 2560p with 160G SSD and i5-2xxx processor and 8G memory ;))
 
Thanks Andy.
 
arad85 said:
You shouldn't need to unplug the HDD as the SSD will go in as well - although sometimes Windows install does want to install itself across drives(!). Certainly it won't hurt to unplug the SATA cable to the HDD just whilst you install Windows.
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Desktop and SSD both arrived today. Not sure if it's a Windows thing or just the disk that Dell supply.. but I did need to disconnect the HDD whilst installing Windows to the SSD. It kept installing across both drives if the HDD was left attached (the tell tale sign being that you can't format the HDD).

Touch wood.. everything's working now, just got an hour or so of Windows updates.. ..

Very fast to boot with the SSD, mind you.. I haven't started adding the software I need yet..
 
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