Me and SWMBO have finally cleared some space in the spare room and purchased a computer desk with a view to purchasing a new desktop computer.

My last desktop PC was a Tiny (remember them?) which I got rid of in 2004 for a Fujitsu Siemens laptop. That went in 2008 for a Dell laptop which in turn went in 2011 when I defected to Apple.

Had 2 MacBooks since then but the price of the latest iMac is hard to justify. The local computer shop in town (in store repairs and tech support) can match PC World for prices and yet offer that better quality service.

I can spec a tower PC to a higher spec than the iMac and still undercut the price by about £500. I'm used to Windows 10 with work now and I defected to Samsung phone 2 years ago so I am no longer immersed in the Apple system. All key documents are saved to my One Drive account.

The old MacBook has gone for £300 so I'm now in limbo. Anyone gone back to Windows from Apple and regretted it? The days of HDD are over so I guess the SSD and 16GB of RAM will speed things up nicely compared to PC's of old. LL.B (Hons) - University of Derby
LOT (Lord of Time) - University of Gallifrey

Have a butchers at “Morgan Computers” they have refurbished ex-company PCs as well as just about everything else, but I have bought a lot of Laptops, PCs and Phones from them over many years and always excellent stuff and good prices.

Last PC I bought was a Dell ex-company desktop, I swapped out the HDD for a SDD and it’s running W10 without any issues, that’s been 5myears now  Regards

David

Lovely i6 has now gone, but not me......

Please let me know if anything in my post offends you, as I may wish to offend you again......

Windows 11 launch is just around the corner. with it's new requirements.

However win 10 will be supported up to 2025 or so I have read.

You can choose to get Windows 11 early - I switched about a month ago on my HP laptop but all our other machines will not run 11. MY13 HSE Lux Santorini Black Gone
MY11 HSE Santorini Black Gone
MY08 SE Blue, Gone
Alfa Romeo GT Gone
Alfa Romeo 156 Space wagon Gone
Volvo V40 Gone
Volvo 480ES Gone
VW Sirocco GTX Gone

Indeed, but if W10 is installed W11 will be a free upgrade I have read, at least for the foreseeable future. Regards

David

Lovely i6 has now gone, but not me......

Please let me know if anything in my post offends you, as I may wish to offend you again......

My first computer was a Sinclair ZX80; our dad bought it for my sister and I. He's still got it stored somewhere.

Have built several PCs over the years (iI enjoy doing it) starting with a 386 with a whopping 40MB HDD, in 1990 IIRC.
Current PC is a few years old now : an overclocked i5, water cooled, 16 GB Ram, 2TB of SSD/HDD, twin monitors (one set up for A4 reading)
Still play games, mainly over the internet with my son but my broadband speed is marginal at times and there is nothing I can do about that.
But these days my son knows far more about computers, programming, servers and networks than I ever will, so I get him to trouble shoot for me. Jules

Windows 10 is the devils operating system.

Spent well over £5k on a Windows 7 laptop in 2015, still working fine, then again i7 & SSD it should be.
Software is paid for and original, no windows updates ever. Unlike the windows 10 machine, twice a day and three times on Thursdays, that's the swamp donkey that work bought for me three years ago, again i7 with loads of memory and a SSD - but Symantec anti virus slows it down massively, and everything is stored on the cloud rather than locally.

Seriously Apple is a stable sweet operating system compared to the bloated monster that windows has become. Yes only buying software from Apple does make it expensive, but think of the time wasted by Windows updates and the blue screen of death. Oh and booting up - learn to live with that one, or let it go to sleep rather than shutting it down. Granted we only have a couple of iPhones and an iPad for comparison, rather than the flow blown Mac.
Are you expected to "rent" Office on the Mac - can't believe that one has taken off like it has on Windows platform. Tangiers Orange - gone, missing her
Replaced by Ewok what a mistake - now a happy Disco Sport owner

A picture of my first computer - an ICL 'One per Desk'. (OPD)

Back in the mid 1980s I used this to link via 'dial up' line to work from home.

It was based on Sinclairs ZX81, complete with microdrives (continuous tape loop) to input/store info. It was designed to run on a proprietary ICL Private Telephone Exchange with each OPD having 2 voice, 1 data, and 1 command lines,

If I remember correctly we had some rudimentry form of text messaging/email.
The OPD also had a word processor, speadsheet and (I think) database functions, as well as a quite sophisticated telephone handling ability.

It was very early days, and we gave away many to our customers, hoping I think that the bosses secretary would find them handy. Unfortunately I think it was before its time and many ended up displayed as ornaments in the various boss's offices.




https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Per_Desk

As regards buying a PC or Laptop at the moment, I believe that it is worth waiting until Windows 11 is out and buy then.
It may save you having compatability/driver problems, although I always seem to end up having to replace some old and cherished device after any major software upgrde. FL2 XS SD4 Auto 2010 2012-2017 (21k - 91k miles) (MY2011)
FL2 Metropolis SD4 Auto 2014 2017- (16k - 77k+ miles) (MY2015)
Metro in its 11th Year of (Extended) LR Warranty / Full LR Service History
(Expensive, but Trouble/Worry free - hopefully?)

Last edited by IanMetro on 15th Sep 2021 6:35 pm. Edited 1 time in total

Certainly Windoze of the past could be a real labour of love. But Win10 has been very good - no issues to speak of really.
Regarding phones, it's been Android all the way for me.
For me the benefit of these operating system has been the availability of large amounts of inexpensive software. eg Libre Office

In fact, when I think about it nobody in our family has ever owned anything by Apple - does that make us a bit odd ?  Jules

Boxbrownie wrote:

I swapped out the HDD for a SDD and it’s running W10 without any issues,

I have just replaced my HDD with SSD on my HP laptop and the difference is amazing. Faster startup than my Macbook and internet much better too due to faster page saving. The last Apple operating system killed it for me - made all my 32 bit software useless and more than doubled startup time which was one of apples biggest selling points. Windows for me. Silver 2009 HSE

Just replaced my Imac after 10 years with a New Imac 24- Brilliant – Yes more expensive but 10 years – and it was still going strong is a good investment I am prepared to make.
Ok yes the fact that it works so well with my iphone, I watch. Ipad and Apple TV did have an influence 😀 2011 XS,Sumatra Black, GONE MARCH 2014- RR Evoque Prestige 5 door ,MY 2014,Loire Blue, Silver Roof, Panoramic roof.
MY 2016 Disco Sport HSE Auto Scotia Grey,REJECTED
Mercedes E220D AMG line with air suspension(Gone)
DS 200 SE Dynamic my 21 (Gone)
DS 200 SE Dynamic my 22 (Gone)
Audi Q5 40TDI S line (gone)
Discovery Sport D200 S 2024 MY

I still use my 2007 Mac mini, works perfectly ok. It is networked with my handful of PCs which are all almost as old. The PCs were for 3D rendering & I had a small computer shop assemble them to my requirements & not waste money on parts I didn't need. Some of them were dual CPU. They were a lot cheaper than a off the shelf equivalent PC.

These days my old Mac uses my android phone hotspot for the internet. No issues there. Procrastination, mankind's greatest labour saving device!

Acoustic insulation ARB TPMS 3xARB air compressors After cooler Air tank On-board OCD pressure air/water cleaning Additional 50L fuel Carpet in doors ABE 2x1kg Waeco 28L modified fridge Battery 4x26ah Solar 120w Victron MPPT 100/20 DC-DC 18amps 175amp jumper plug Awning 6x255/60R18

Well the eagle has landed so to speak! First desktop computer since 2004! 3.6GHZ intel i3 processor, 240GB SSD and 16GB of RAM. 27" Philips monitor and wireless keyboard and mouse.

Purchased from an independent shop in town and it was built to order within a week. All on site service and repair. Upgrade to 3 year warranty (comes with 2 years), was just £20. Full Avast anti-virus suite included in the price but I have also downloaded Spybot search and destroy and have an existing Nord VPN account.

Very pleased with it and will upgrade to Windows 11 in due course.  LL.B (Hons) - University of Derby
LOT (Lord of Time) - University of Gallifrey

As I understand it you require a bit of hardware built into your computer called a TPM. This is an important part of enabling secure connections. There are work arounds, but are not recommended.

Trusted Platform Module version 2.0 (TPM 2.0). TPM 2.0 is required to run Windows 11

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/window...6b0c90645c FL2 XS SD4 Auto 2010 2012-2017 (21k - 91k miles) (MY2011)
FL2 Metropolis SD4 Auto 2014 2017- (16k - 77k+ miles) (MY2015)
Metro in its 11th Year of (Extended) LR Warranty / Full LR Service History
(Expensive, but Trouble/Worry free - hopefully?)