PC Advice

[hipower]

I'm looking for a little help from the tech literate people here. I'm in the market for a new PC, desktop or an all-in-one unit. Since we just became a 2 retiree family, I'm looking for sub 1000 pricing. 

Not finding much in the desktop models that interest me but the old tried and true HP. I'm on my third one, but it's going downhill fast. Sam's has a nice desktop right at a grand, but also has a Lenovo all-in one that sort of pulls at me for around 800. Specs seem to be about the same, so I'm asking for help.

Thoughts?

Thanks in advance from the almost luddite old guy.

[Trekbike]

Are you set on getting a desktop, or is a laptop an option?    If so, you probably can get more computer for less since they tend to go on sale quite often.

 

[No_0ne]

For a desktop, you might consider having one built to order.  There are shops that do this, also a lot of regular folks can put one together for you, chances are somebody you know has built their own ...

[hipower]

2 hours ago, Trekbike said:

Are you set on getting a desktop, or is a laptop an option?    If so, you probably can get more computer for less since they tend to go on sale quite often.

 

We have a laptop that is pretty much my wife's. I really don't care for it. I just have gotten addicted to sitting in our office and doing things. I probably could change, but old and stuck in my ways. lol

[hipower]

33 minutes ago, No_0ne said:

For a desktop, you might consider having one built to order.  There are shops that do this, also a lot of regular folks can put one together for you, chances are somebody you know has built their own ...

Not really savvy enough to know what to ask for in a build.

My needs are really rather simple. Not a games person, just like a large monitor(24-32 inches), wireless keyboard and mouse. The all-in-one format probably is the route to go since it would seemingly take less space on my desk.

But going back to my original question...comments on the Lenovo would be appreciated.

Again, thanks for the input.

[Jamie Jackson]

4 hours ago, hipower said:

We have a laptop that is pretty much my wife's. I really don't care for it. I just have gotten addicted to sitting in our office and doing things. I probably could change, but old and stuck in my ways. lol

I am a devout techno-tard my Brother. But I purchased an ACER laptop several years back to replace the dinosaur of a desk top I had. The ACER sets on my desk and since I'll injure myself trying to use the touch-pad mouse thing, I have a wireless mouse attached. This setup serves my limited skills and needs quite well. I've never removed it from my desk. That'd just simply feel weird to me... 

But then I still marvel at fire and think electricity is some kind of hoo-do magic.. :0

[Trekbike]

6 hours ago, hipower said:

My needs are really rather simple. Not a games person, just like a large monitor(24-32 inches), wireless keyboard and mouse. 

 Not sure what the total amount would add up to but you can add the above mentioned items to a laptop.    Basically the best of both world, mobile when you need to, convenience of a full size keyboard, monitor, and mouse in the office.    This is my setup at my work.   I have a laptop for travel and home, but hook up to the other items when I'm in my work office.  

[DaveTN]

10 hours ago, hipower said:

so I'm asking for help.

I wouldn’t buy an all in one. The laptop is a good idea if you travel and want to take it with you, if you don’t; stick with a desktop. The desktop gives you the most ability and serviceability. If a component goes out, or you need to change something; it’s very easy to do so.

Since you don’t need the fast video of a gaming machine; you shouldn’t need to spend a lot. But don’t base your choice on price or what’s on sale.

People like to rip on Dell, but they own this market. (Midrange and small business PC’s) They are the Glock of the computer market. They aren’t the best and they aren’t the cheapest, but if you want the same thing everyone else has, and something that’s reliable; Glock….errrrr Dell is your product.

Dell is a quality product, I have owned many and own several right now. But the Dells sold in BestBuy and the others are not the same as what you order online. I would order a Dell online; it just doesn’t get any better than that in the price range you will be in.

I run a Desktop as my main PC and a laptop as my business programming PC because it needs to be portable. I use 24” and 26” monitors on my Desktop and a 32” on my laptop. You can get a 32” monitor for around $169 on sale.

If you don’t do anything but surf the net and get email; you don’t need to spend a bunch. For example, you will have to decide between i5 and i7 Intel processors. an i7 will bump the price $200 over an i5 and you won’t see any difference for what you are doing.

As far as the Lenovo, I don’t have any experience with their desktops, but I just replaced my Dell work laptop with a Lenovo. I run software that requires specialized graphics. Because of that in a Dell I had to go to a “Workstation” laptop that was $1600. Lenovo was about the same on price vs. specs. But when I emailed back and forth with them the quoted me a “sale price” of $1050. So I ordered it. I’ve only had it about three weeks, but its very nice; we shall see.

Here is an example to start with. XPS is not their most expensive desktop, but it’s no slouch either. Intel i5, 8GB ram (+16 Optane), 1TB hard drive, for $681. As you can see, you can change the specs to most anything you want; all it takes is money. That price does not include a monitor (You will probably be getting that 32" somewhere else) or I don’t think it includes keyboard and mouse.

https://www.dell.com/en-us/member/shop/desktop-computers-all-in-one-pcs/xps-desktop/spd/xps-8930-desktop/xdvmstcs007s

[peejman]

What Dave said. 

We use Lenovo machines at work and while fairly rudimentary, they seem to survive the shop floor abuse reasonably well. Higher end machines are Dells. 

I'm also in the market for a new PC, which will largely be an internet terminal. We don't do anything at home that requires significant horsepower. Our MIS person told me to sign up for the Dell email notifications. Get a decent machine, max out the RAM and it should run fine for years to come. I've seen decent desktop CPU's for $400-$500.  I've already got all the peripherals, all I need is the box. 

[deadeye111]

I like Dave’s configuration also. The only thing i would add is a SSD drive instead of regular hard drive for myself. 

[deadeye111]

Dell will have Black Friday deals. 

[DaveTN]

33 minutes ago, deadeye111 said:

Dell will have Black Friday deals. 

They will. You will probably not see any better deals than you will see in the next 3 weeks. But if you see a good deal on what you want, don’t sit on your hands trying to decide, it won’t be up long; order it. They usually switch their deals every couple of days. They (like everyone else) will be offering some killer deals to keep everyone from waiting until black Friday or Cyber Monday. Also, don’t forget Dell has a 30 day price guarantee for the exact same thing ordered online.

[10-Ring]

I have a Lenovo laptop for work and I like it.  Quality seems to be pretty good.  We recently bought a Chromebook to share as a family and we really like it.  It's the ticket for casual computer use.  

[jgradyc]

Regardless of your choice of laptop, all in one, or desktop, I'd suggest an SSD drive. Boot time, long a nemesis of windows PCs, is under 20 seconds for me and that includes entering my PIN. If I didn't use a password, it would be under 15 seconds. Windows also needs about 4GB of RAM.  A 124GB SSD should be large enough unless you're storing a lot of videos and audio files. 

I haven't used a desktop in 10 years, so I can't provide a recommendation. 

I have thought of adding a 24" monitor to my laptop, but for me, setting the "Scale and Layout" for fonts and icons to 175% works fine on my 13" Samsung laptop.

[jgradyc]

In addition to watching Dell for deals, check out BestBuy. Last year, the Samsung Spin 7 13.3" 2-1 laptop, normally $899, was on sale for $599. I missed the sale, but I found a returned unit a month later in their Open Box, Certified category for $599. 

One other point to consider is display resolution and the desktop's resolution. My neighbor has a 24" monitor, but the pixelation would drive me nuts if I had to use it regularly. Before I buy a laptop, I open a document in its word processor and see if the fonts look spidery. That's a deal killer for me.

[btq96r]

If all you want a computer for is general web browsing, and maybe some lite spreadsheet work, I'll jump on my soapbox and extol the virtues of a Linux build.  The OS is free, and usually easy to put on any old machine for a fraction of the cost you'd pay for a new Windows machine.  I've been using one at home now for a while, and I don't ever see myself going back to Windows unless I'm ever in business for myself again some day, and with Office 365 Online and Google Drive, it would still be a decision.

 

[DaveTN]

SSD drive prices are dropping a eventually they will be he norm. Right now you have to make a choice, size and speed vs. cost. I never turn my PC off; so start-up is a non-issue for me; it might be for you. 256 and 512GB SSD drives are fine if you don’t need a bunch of storage space. I want a 1TB minimum hard drive for redundancy. I split it and run Acronis to image my OS and save all my files. If my OS or a program screws up; its an easy fix. If my hard drive goes out, I’m covered by an external hard drive.

To change that drive from a 1TB SATA to a 512 SSD is $147 to a 1TB SDD is $343. An XPS with a SATA hard drive is going to start fast. A SSD might start a few seconds faster. Other than startup; you aren’t doing anything that can take advantage of the speed of a SSD.

Pixelization, resolution and font appearance won’t be an issue on any modern Windows 10 quality computer; especially on a big monitor.

 Now…. if you want to jump in here and say “I might want to play games.” This whole thread changes and so do the prices. 

[DaveTN]

Here’s a Lenovo for $486.00, just add a monitor and you are GTG. This deals ends in 16 hours.

i5-8400 Processor, Windows 10 Home, 8.0GB RAM, 1TB 7200 RPM Hard Drive, DVD Recordable drive, NVIDIA GeForce GT 730 2GB graphics, Keyboard,USB Optical Mouse,WiFi Wireless LAN Adapters + Bluetooth® 4.1,

https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/desktops-and-all-in-ones/ideacentre/700-tower/Ideacentre-720-Intel/p/99IC9720272

 

[hipower]

5 hours ago, Trekbike said:

 Not sure what the total amount would add up to but you can add the above mentioned items to a laptop.    Basically the best of both world, mobile when you need to, convenience of a full size keyboard, monitor, and mouse in the office.    This is my setup at my work.   I have a laptop for travel and home, but hook up to the other items when I'm in my work office.  

Interesting thought. Thanks. I could keep my current monitor that way.

[quedz]

Are you getting all this hipower? 

Edited November 4, 2019 by hughd

[hipower]

1 hour ago, DaveTN said:

SSD drive prices are dropping a eventually they will be he norm. Right now you have to make a choice, size and speed vs. cost. I never turn my PC off; so start-up is a non-issue for me; it might be for you. 256 and 512GB SSD drives are fine if you don’t need a bunch of storage space. I want a 1TB minimum hard drive for redundancy. I split it and run Acronis to image my OS and save all my files. If my OS or a program screws up; its an easy fix. If my hard drive goes out, I’m covered by an external hard drive.

To change that drive from a 1TB SATA to a 512 SSD is $147 to a 1TB SDD is $343. An XPS with a SATA hard drive is going to start fast. A SSD might start a few seconds faster. Other than startup; you aren’t doing anything that can take advantage of the speed of a SSD.

Pixelization, resolution and font appearance won’t be an issue on any modern Windows 10 quality computer; especially on a big monitor.

 Now…. if you want to jump in here and say “I might want to play games.” This whole thread changes and so do the prices. 

Thanks for the comments. Now I have to interpret them. Basically I think, for me and what little I do, an out of the box standard model with similar specs to what you mention will do. Anything more than that would be a waste.

Gaming, for me, has been rousing games of solitaire.

[DaveTN]

26 minutes ago, hipower said:

Thanks for the comments. Now I have to interpret them. Basically I think, for me and what little I do, an out of the box standard model with similar specs to what you mention will do. Anything more than that would be a waste.

Gaming, for me, has been rousing games of solitaire.

You are welcome. Basically you just need to decide if you want a laptop or desktop. Portability is good, but has consequences, only pick that if you want to travel with your PC, knowing that you are giving up the ability to swap out most components.

You may be able to use the monitor you have with a desktop or a laptop, either one. What type connections does your monitor have?

Desktops could have any or all of these. Most new (but not all) laptops will only have HDMI.

[hipower]

Yes, the HP has all these connectors. So it's not totally unfamiliar.

[DaveTN]

11 minutes ago, hipower said:

Yes, the HP has all these connectors. So it's not totally unfamiliar.

Does your monitor have that HDMI?

[hipower]

Thanks to all. I think I'll go out this afternoon and look at several units. Not sure exactly what I'll do, but the desktop is definitely leading. So I'll be pretty much comfy with it.

DaveTn, thanks for the advice. I like the looks and specks of that linked Lenovo. Very good price. Don't like the wired keyboard, but can live with it. I'm assuming Optical refers to wireless mouse, so it might be leading at the moment.

Now, my thanks for all the advice and comments. Hughd, btq96r, jGrady, 10_Ring, deadeye111, peejayman, No_one, Trekbike, and Jamie Jackson, I appreciate your coming to my aid.

I won't say I understood it all, lol, but I gathered some info that will get me to where I want/need to be.

Thanks.