Computer Advice

[flatwins]

For what it's worth, I have been an IT guy for a long time. Servers, workstations, etc. I've also built a BUNCH of computers from scratch. There comes a point when your time is worth more than the heartache. When you build PCs from scratch, you don't have a common website to go to locate updated drivers for the different components you used to assemble the machine. For the experienced person, this is not usually a problem but if you ever hand off the PC for someone to work on, they will be chasing drivers all over the internet and often won't easily find them.

I work on Windows stuff all day, every day. But when I come home, it's all Mac.

 

[doctorjj]

No optical drive, no keyboard, no mouse, 2GB Ram, I don't think so, but thanks anyway.

And like I said, if you have a grand...

You can have a wireless mouse or trackpad and keyboard and a external
bluray drive and you can upgrade to 8 gb from crucial and stay below $1k.

 

[Flynraider]

[video=youtube_share;bm7JH1FT_yM]http://youtu.be/bm7JH1FT_yM[/video]

http://youtu.be/bm7JH1FT_yM


Love this. Macs are good machines but not the be all end all that a lot of people seem to think they are.

 

[hnbanks]

i have trouble finding an on switch

 

[Droberts]

tRdoc's posts have been spot on.

in todays world anyone who has to go down to the store and buy a fully built system is throwing away money, a lot of money. the way i see it basic pc construction is as important as knowing how to file your taxes, or change your own oil. simple life skills that separate the competent do-it-your-selfers from the suckers who have to pay for it. it makes me sad to see all the people in various stores looking at pcs trying to decide which one to buy when the answer is a resounding NONE OF THEM.

i usually build pc's for folks by having them sit down with me as we go over all the parts involved, teaching them the do's dont's goods bads etc, order the parts & then walk them through building it themselves. they walk away with a cheap yet powerfull machine & the knowledge to build another one without the help of a pc tech. they learn not only why a part is a good choice but what specifics about the part's features make it better, why a certain cpu pin type while physically backwards compatible may not be logically backwards compatible with a motherboard socket, the disadvantages of lack or horizontal spanning in the nvidia geforce line of graphics cards, the importance of a single rail power supply vs multi-rail, how a quad core cpu can be faster than a hex core, how stores that advertise 12 gigs of ram on a machine is absurdly excessive, how to identify PCI, PCI-E, AGP, & mini-pcie ports on the motherboard & how to tell which ones to use in order to keep them at the proper multiplier(8vs16x), how to reset bios, bios functions, boot priority, how to calculate the true speed of ram from its CAS latency & bus speed, how to identify IDE, SATA, IEEE1394, usb pinouts, audio pinouts, power connectors blah blah blah etc etc etc etc etc etc . i enjoy spreading the knowledge to others & charge only a case of beer, preferably a large one i can teach you as much as you want to know, or as little as you want to know.

the most recent machine i built was for a paintball buddy of mine. his wife gave him a go-ahead to get a new pc & he asked me to help him learn/pick parts/build it. his wife was a little skeptical & one of the conditions on the purchase was that i show a part for part listing of components & price compared to what it would cost from a dell equivalent. that was fun his system had a beefy single rail power supply, very fast processor, solid state drive, plenty of ram, good air flow case, very fast gaming video card, the works, runs skyrim on max settings like a dream. cost him bout 900 bucks, priced out on dell is was about 3200.

as for macs, at the risk of offending any mac users here, yes they have a niche market catering to a consumer base that has no interest in educating themselves on how build & properly maintain computers. they have a smaller developer pool & an even smaller open source community. from a business perspective there's nothing wrong with that, but as a longtime DIY pc enthusiast & follower of best practices through industry standards i could never in good conscious recommend a mac to anyone. its kind of funny that mac users have such a culture of elitism about them yet the whole reason for purchasing them in the first place is so that they dont have to bother with understanding how they work.

anyway, case of beer is all i ask. i'll help you select, order & build a new pc for yourself to the point where you are comfortable teaching someone else the same skills. the sit down & order takes about an hour visit somewheres, and the build takes about 2 hours once the parts arrive. if anyone has a serious desire to learn how to build a pc send me a pm & i'll see what i can do about helping out. if you like to fish i prefer doing orders from my boat, i have plenty of power & broadband available.