Not a bad concept but it's difficult to trust a seller eg. that misrepresents a 3G dual core as a 6GHz processor and quotes UK mainland delivery as free with Ireland and Wales 15quid extra.
Fine for the switched on but perhaps not something I'd suggest for a noob.
Especially when you can get, for example, a brand new laptop which will quite possibly out-perform it, with W8.1 already installed (and, obviously, licensed), as you imply it will use less electricity, built-in monitor and UPS! For £230.
In message , Clive George writes
I think I'm still 1980's rather than 90's, but I actually use more than one KVM.
We have
Some of these, particularly the XP audio machine, have the network interface disabled so that updates and malware are avoided.
On top of this, I run several laptops with various OS's and various software configurations so that I can test setups and support a few old colleagues as they hit problems. (Today's was a writer friend whose W8.1 Control Panel has completely disappeared. We haven't yet solved it.)
KVM is vital, especially for the non-network machine.
I'll look at that for next time.
I don't see the difference - if it had been successful, the next installation of XBMC would have been on the AV-PC in the back room. The installation on this box was nothing more than a convenience to familiarise myself with it before installing on the other. It was like pulling my toenails out with rusty pliers and I didn't want to repeat the process.
Noted, ta.
In message , Arfa Daily writes
I did and I'm not!
Somebody once tried to teach me Elliot Algol back when things were done with punched tape. I managed a few things on the kids Spectrum and BBC B which included cheating on Colossal Adventure by looking through the software. Very little progress since then.
I don't go fiddling with the oil pump on my motor car and don't expect to have to do it on a computer.
Precisely.
Which is why you should abandon windows..
In message , The Natural Philosopher writes
Umm.. I was the chap left sitting on the edge of the swimming pool while everyone else was having fun!
Message so far:-
Transferring my existing stuff to a later version of Windows is not likely to be easy.
Free office software is readily available (Kingsoft) for word processing. My existing data files may not be accessible if transferred?
Where I have original installation discs and the software version is compatible, I will be able to load and use. (Quickbooks, Photoshop
7etc.)A re-furbed. computer will have a working browser and be licensed. It may not last many more years.
Care should be exercised in assuming E-Bay descriptions are accurate.
Windows 32 bit will limit addressable memory and constrain performance. (gaming was never an ambition)
A tower sold for use in a noisy office environment may not be suitable for home use.
Available connections may not match printer and other peripherals.
anything else?
The current m/c is ticking OK at the moment so I'll hold off rushing ahead. Thanks to all who have sympathised and contributed.
In article , Tim Lamb scribeth thus
Well it's up to you..
Its not that bad!.
Yep if their WIN 7 compatible..
It well might..
Not a real problem..
In fact the ones I've got a very quiet indeed you'd hardly know their running they have a fan speed control programme.
Well USB and Ethernet are now a given but you may well not be able to find a Parallel port but if your printers that old time for investment in a new one!.
Yes just do it. I upgraded to a new machine from WIN 2K Pro to WIN 7 and it all just works and works well. Hardly any problems to report of:)
Yes been there and tried Linux and yep its OK but there were a few oddities on it that I didn't particularity like but thats a personal thing ..
In message , tony sayer writes
Is Kingsoft any better than LibreOffice that I am now settled on? LO and OO have a huge user base for help, and I manage almost perfectly in dealing with incoming docs, sheets and Powerpoint from all sorts of corporate users.
If you have an old, valid Photoshop licence, I would think you should be morally able to find and install the version that Adobe made available when it messed up its registration setup. I know the Elements version was available. I think the CS2 Suite includes Photoshop. I haven't looked recently, so I'm not certain if this is all still accessible.
In message , Tim Lamb writes
Transferring stuff from one PC to another is never 'easy' even if same operating system :-) TBH, it is more time consuming that difficult, and I know some people love images of their hard drives, but I take a new hard drive as an excuse to not bother transferring anything that seemed a good idea at the time, but I never use.
I now use open office because I'm too tight to buy a licence for Word, Excel etc. Works perfectly, and opens/saves all my old Word/Excel files.
Should be fine, unless you buy a 64 bit machine and try to run 32 bit software like Turnpike.
OTOH, it may last years. One I bought second hand did.
That should be engraved on every buyer's heart.
Has never been a problem for me.
Not a problem with one I bought.
True, but converters are available. My mouse and keyboard both have PS2 connectors, so I bought something like eBay item 161428852386 which works perfectly. Similar converters are available for printers, but my big problem was modern drivers for an old printer. I gave up in the end, and bought a cheap Canon printer which does the job.
Really depends what you want to do. You're not a gamer, and probably have no need for a brand new super fast machine. I certainly don't. I use two PCs, my son's hand me down W7 desktop, and this little Toshiba NB200 netbook, both of which do everything I need, although the Tosh sometimes struggles with large images, using Paint Shop Pro 5. Then I just switch to the desktop.
I think Windows and Turnpike are the only paid for, licenced software I use. PSP5 came from a cover disk. I use Blue Moon/ Firefox browser, Open Office suite, and various other downloadable stuff for FTP, anti virus etc.
My only luxury item is an external USB hard drive onto which I backup all my data files [1]. Should either PC or hard drive die, I'll buy a new hard drive or used PC, reinstall the programs and copy my data. No more difficult than upgrading to another PC through choice.
[1] And the complete Turnpike folder.
It really does depend on what you want to move, transferring it to something other than windows will likely be harder. For basic web / internet stuff it will be straight forward. Trying to move and installed version of PS without the disc would be difficult*.
Any of the compatible suites will open docs from older versions of MS office (sometimes better than later versions of office). The time you run into compatibility problems is when round tripping back and forth between different versions.
If you don't mind a quick bit of tinkering then a cheap upgrade for a refurb machine would be to clone the hard drive onto a SSD. Pretty easy to do and a massive performance boost all round.
True, and perhaps. There are only limited applications now where you are going to find yourself restricted by memory capacity.
Some are actually fairly quiet (HP are often good in that respect). Again you could always swap in quieter fans.
The only one you are likely to possibly miss is a parallel port - but many machines still have them. Many modern machines don't have a RS232 on the back plane (but normally have a connector on the motherboard to allow you to add your own). You can circumvent most of these issues with USB based adaptors.
XBMC as a media centre worked fine and until it encountered the sat card, was perfectly ok to live with. Configuring it to recognise the card, then actually work with it, was hair-tearing. Merely playing files with it was a breeze.
Download any live cd version of Linux and it will be able to save any files and folders you want to keep. Better still put a linux partition on the PCs you want to work on and save the files in them.
Then when you have gained experience and confidence chuck to Windows partition out. Or just leave it where it belongs until you are old enough to act like a big boy.
In article , Bill scribeth thus
Well her indoors has a lot of Word doc's and suchlike sent to her and was always complaining re OO or LO would not open them or sodded up the formatting etc but since using KO no further problems reported..
Libre office is a lot better and if you install the stock windows fonts as well it gets EVEN better.
But you cant allow for people who have made a pigs ear of their word docs in the first place.
In message , News writes
Loads of software is just 32bit still, most 32 bit software is fine on
64bit windows. Turnpike 6 is a bit of an oddity as it is tied in closely to Windows - basically it uses Windows Explorer. IIRC it worked ok in the RC, MS introduced a bug into the RTM of Win7 that broke Turnpike and it was never fixed.Some old programs struggle, but compatibility mode normally fixes that.
I doesn't seem to make any difference to performance, but if you run stuff that benefits from the extra RAM then it might be a limitation. For general day to day use 4GB is fine though.
My experience is that office machines are ok - they tend to be from Dell/hp/IBM etc. and loud machines aren't appreciated in an office.
It's cheap no names I'd be wary off using a cheap noisy power supply.
Well these were one's from academic establishments and I rather doubt they'd sod them up, and I have heard of others who still have compatibility problems. It seems that there are still issues when using all three programs..
touching naievete ;-)
and I have heard of others who still have
Even people with Word have problems with Word compatibilty - google it..
Word is incompatible with itself, basically. Cross-platform? Yes, you can get Word for Mac and Windows, but even within either platform different versions can do different things.
To be fair, it works *mostly*. Too many people, though, just use spaces and the return key to format their docs. They've barely heard of the tab key (or setting tabs), and even more rarely of page breaks or styles. I've even seen multi-column stuff done that way, too.
Or you could just use LibreOffice like everybody sane.
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