Advice please on buying a PC?

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moonjiver
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Re: Advice please on buying a PC?

Postby moonjiver » Sun Jul 17, 2016 12:31 pm

Brilliant. Thanks. I bought the Office suite from Buddy's, so presumably I can load it from the disk onto a new PC (already got it on my laptop).

Only thing is that on the laptop I had a slight hick-up when installing, to do with the licence, which Geoff kindly sorted for me! Don't know whether that issue might resurface if I try it on a new PC, or maybe it will be ok now ..

I'm quite worried about graduating to Windows 10, mixed reactions from users. I'm hanging on to my laptop for now (W7) in case I find W10 really difficult to grapple with!

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Derek Jempson
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Re: Advice please on buying a PC?

Postby Derek Jempson » Sun Jul 17, 2016 12:36 pm

As for an office suite, why not use LibreOffice https://www.libreoffice.org/. It's free (unless you want to make a donation), it's constantly under development, and in my opinion, it's every bit as good as commercial office suites. I've used it for years, and wouldn't change to anything else.

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moonjiver
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Re: Advice please on buying a PC?

Postby moonjiver » Sun Jul 17, 2016 12:48 pm

Thanks, that's useful. Will check it out.

I did try Open Office sometimes on a friend's computer, wasn't that keen. There were some compatibility issues, it couldn't read some of my MS documents.

Does it work to install a secondary free office suite, as well as MS Office being on there already? I never thought of doing it that way before.

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Derek Jempson
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Re: Advice please on buying a PC?

Postby Derek Jempson » Sun Jul 17, 2016 1:27 pm

Yes, you can install two, or more office suites, but you can only designate one of them to open MS document format files. Don't confuse Open Office with LibreOffice. The latter forked off from Open Office some years ago and is now a much superior application.

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moonjiver
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Re: Advice please on buying a PC?

Postby moonjiver » Sun Jul 17, 2016 1:56 pm

Thanks. LibreOffice came up yesterday when I was researching recommended free software. Will have a look at it.

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Richard
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Re: Advice please on buying a PC?

Postby Richard » Thu Jul 21, 2016 11:45 am

harking back to the PC/Pshop questions:

"I did more research - Adobe recommends a CPU of 2 GHz or faster for Photoshop. The dual core Intel Core i3 processor I mentioned earlier is 3.70GHz, but the P/Bell PC I looked at previously has an "up-to-date" quad core processor - speed only 2.4GHz. Clearly quad core doesn't necessarily mean enhanced performance! Seems to depend what sort of programs you will be running."

Talking hypothetically, you have to multiply any given clock speed by the number of cores to get an idea of the potential speed/performance.
For a true quad-core i5 processor you would generally get a better performance for photo-editing.
Unless it’s heavy professional work, I don’t think you will need more than 8GB RAM

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Richard
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Re: Advice please on buying a PC?

Postby Richard » Thu Jul 21, 2016 11:48 am

RAM is fairly easy to upgrade but you may have to do a complete replacement!!

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moonjiver
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Re: Advice please on buying a PC?

Postby moonjiver » Thu Jul 21, 2016 12:02 pm

Thanks Richard. That's rather what I gathered, that 8GB RAM would be adequate. I am assuming that, if more RAM is added (to the existing 4GB), it will actually be an improvement - I gather that any noticeable difference can depend on whether the processor is actually fast enough. to support more RAM.

As I said, I have focused on one PC with seemingly the right specifications for my needs. But I am checking around to see if there is anything similar (or cheaper) which I should be looking at and which might also do the job!

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Richard
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Re: Advice please on buying a PC?

Postby Richard » Thu Jul 21, 2016 7:30 pm

...and since:

dual core Intel Core i3 processor is 2 x 3.70GHz
quad core Intel Core i5 (true) processor is 4 x 2.4GHz

therefore the i5 still gives better performance (as a rough generalisation).

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moonjiver
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Re: Advice please on buying a PC?

Postby moonjiver » Tue Aug 09, 2016 1:36 pm

I'm ready to make the final jump and buy a new PC! Sounds dumb but it's a big step for me - since I still know hardly anyone who is good on computers, I've had to do tons of research myself and rather painfully understand it.

It all got further delayed because the guy who was decorating my flat cleared off without finishing the job - I've become rather an expert in repairs and mirror-finish paint jobs!

So now I can return to Currys (actually found them quite helpful) and I think I know enough to argue about what processor is in there, RAM etc etc. I have also found a friendly IT guy to advise me, seems nice and if he is any good I'll post a recommendation here later.

One last query. I have identified several 24-inch monitors, mainly Samsungs and Acers, some are best buys on the review websites with HDMI and other ports and good enough displays for working with images. Would anyone care to throw in some more specific pointers? I don't need a fast monitor for gaming. (I may go for one of the free photo-editing programs for now rather than Photoshop - bit simpler!).


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