Where to next ?
Thread Starter
Where to next ?
Bit of advice please. Straight off have to say I'm not a geek and have only a basic working knowledge of IT.
At home we run a desktop PC hidden in a cupboard, concealed-wired to a monitor & wireless to keyboard/mouse/broadband in our living room. The printer sits in the same cupboard. We like this set up as its pretty social & unobtrusive. The tower has been upgraded component by component over the years with the latest being power supply (blew up), Primary Hard Drive (to 200GB), CPU and RAM, the latter two to alleviate freezing. We're running XP Home and archaic versions of Office but have latterly installed Thunderbird and Firefox.
Now the problem is we keep getting power interruptions, boot fails and repetitive disk checking. I suspect this may be down to a hardware problem (have changed the main cable which helped for a while) or overheating of the CPU (not sure the heatsink bonding is 100%). However, allied to the out of date OS and Apps, I'm getting the impression its a bit like tinkering with an old car and maybe its time for a new one......
I generally have a work laptop so most of the Excel type stuff I can do on there. I will also be leaving my current company soon and expect to be able to keep this laptop as part of the settlement. Its a 3-year old Dell Latitude running XP Pro. I would expect to get a new laptop with whatever new employment I can gain.
Our home requirements are pretty basic - e-mail, web surfing, photos, itunes, letter writing, burn music CD's for the cars, kiddie stuff (daughters 5 & 3) etc. No gaming or heavy multimedia. We do have a fairly new Plasma TV but I wouldn't know where to start or what it could do re integration (we're not big movie buffs)
Question is, what should we do ?
Keep upgrading the tower
Buy a new tower to bring us back to a baseline of stability
Wait for W7 and go for multi-licence (incl the inherited laptop)
Buy a second laptop and docking station
Budget is pretty limited and whilst Mac's are pretty funky and supposed to be stable, residing in a cupboard don't do much for aesthetics and I've always found Apple stuff strangely counter-intuitive. I've not used the freeware equivalents of Excel/Word etc - are they any good and in anyway cross-readable ?
At home we run a desktop PC hidden in a cupboard, concealed-wired to a monitor & wireless to keyboard/mouse/broadband in our living room. The printer sits in the same cupboard. We like this set up as its pretty social & unobtrusive. The tower has been upgraded component by component over the years with the latest being power supply (blew up), Primary Hard Drive (to 200GB), CPU and RAM, the latter two to alleviate freezing. We're running XP Home and archaic versions of Office but have latterly installed Thunderbird and Firefox.
Now the problem is we keep getting power interruptions, boot fails and repetitive disk checking. I suspect this may be down to a hardware problem (have changed the main cable which helped for a while) or overheating of the CPU (not sure the heatsink bonding is 100%). However, allied to the out of date OS and Apps, I'm getting the impression its a bit like tinkering with an old car and maybe its time for a new one......
I generally have a work laptop so most of the Excel type stuff I can do on there. I will also be leaving my current company soon and expect to be able to keep this laptop as part of the settlement. Its a 3-year old Dell Latitude running XP Pro. I would expect to get a new laptop with whatever new employment I can gain.
Our home requirements are pretty basic - e-mail, web surfing, photos, itunes, letter writing, burn music CD's for the cars, kiddie stuff (daughters 5 & 3) etc. No gaming or heavy multimedia. We do have a fairly new Plasma TV but I wouldn't know where to start or what it could do re integration (we're not big movie buffs)
Question is, what should we do ?
Keep upgrading the tower
Buy a new tower to bring us back to a baseline of stability
Wait for W7 and go for multi-licence (incl the inherited laptop)
Buy a second laptop and docking station
Budget is pretty limited and whilst Mac's are pretty funky and supposed to be stable, residing in a cupboard don't do much for aesthetics and I've always found Apple stuff strangely counter-intuitive. I've not used the freeware equivalents of Excel/Word etc - are they any good and in anyway cross-readable ?
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Now the problem is we keep getting power interruptions, boot fails and repetitive disk checking. I suspect this may be down to a hardware problem (have changed the main cable which helped for a while) or overheating of the CPU (not sure the heatsink bonding is 100%). However, allied to the out of date OS and Apps, I'm getting the impression its a bit like tinkering with an old car and maybe its time for a new one......
Statement #1 I would make, is you've probably had your money's worth out of the existing tower, and things like W7 are going to fly on 64-bit capable hardware, which is where there's going to be a differentiation occurring shortly in the "new PC/old PC" market (which was masked for a while by the failure of Vista to take market share from XP).
What model is your Dell laptop?
I would suggest whilst you don't have a firm handle on your ultimate requirements, and are in a period of flux both technically and financially, the smart money would be on not spending a bean (other than on backing up that tower) and seeing if you can perform all your tasks on the laptop.
I'm with MikeB on backup - like now - if you've anything of value on the machine... sounds like you could lose everything any time now. Onto DVDs poss, or an external hard drive.
I wonder if there is a middle way?
I seem to go through the sequence you've described every few years: adding or replacing various bits with more reliable or tastier bits... and then suddenly realising that base units faster and more ambitious than mine are on sale on Ebay for a hundred quid or less. So I dump all my valuable stuff onto a hard drive, buy a new desktop, put the old hard drive - less programs & o.s. into the new machine as a secondary or tertiary drive and start the iteration all over again.
So why not get one of those 'last year' models for a few tens of quids, keep all the peripherals, and then wait as MB has suggested for the W7 dust to settle? Any extras you want to transfer to your interim machine can be stripped off old faithful, to do the things you need them for.
I wonder if there is a middle way?
I seem to go through the sequence you've described every few years: adding or replacing various bits with more reliable or tastier bits... and then suddenly realising that base units faster and more ambitious than mine are on sale on Ebay for a hundred quid or less. So I dump all my valuable stuff onto a hard drive, buy a new desktop, put the old hard drive - less programs & o.s. into the new machine as a secondary or tertiary drive and start the iteration all over again.
So why not get one of those 'last year' models for a few tens of quids, keep all the peripherals, and then wait as MB has suggested for the W7 dust to settle? Any extras you want to transfer to your interim machine can be stripped off old faithful, to do the things you need them for.
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You are pointing already towards possible heat problems. How hot is it in your cupboard, any air getting in? Fans may not get enough fresh air to cool down the system. CPU, cards, drives, all get pretty hot and any air will help....
Sitting here in an unusual 48 C, I stopped asking why my modem-router can be used to fry eggs and does not connect to the ISP anymore....
Sitting here in an unusual 48 C, I stopped asking why my modem-router can be used to fry eggs and does not connect to the ISP anymore....
Thread Starter
Thanks for the replies folks. Think heat may be an issue but the cupboard is pretty big. It has spurred me into buying an external hard drive to back everything up. Think I'll see how it goes and watch prices for a replacement machine & get W7. The laptop is a D410 Latitude by the way.
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I would be tempted to accept the freebie 30 day test of "Carbonite" to back up that disc to the ether - then pull it back down to a new hard drive if you elect not to continue the subscription.
Repeated restarts of the potentialy dying disc you already have may lead to an advanced death of your current drive.
Repeated restarts of the potentialy dying disc you already have may lead to an advanced death of your current drive.
Thread Starter
I recall doing a 30-day download of a disc cloning app last time I changed the master hard drive. I think it was Acronis and suspect won't be able to do it again to the same pc or e-mail address. What else would anyone recommend other than Carbonite and can it be done straight to the new Western Digital external hard drive just acquired pending future replacement of the tower ?
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I would not bother with a new tower for now if you get to keep your Dell.
Use that as your home unit and it should serve you sufficiently when you get your new work laptop.
OpenOffice is a great free alternative to MS Office and yes they are cross readable.
Just give it a try, you will never know if it suits you until you do.
Use that as your home unit and it should serve you sufficiently when you get your new work laptop.
OpenOffice is a great free alternative to MS Office and yes they are cross readable.
Just give it a try, you will never know if it suits you until you do.
Thread Starter
Getting a bit scary.....
Downloaded a 15-day trial of the latest Acronis and am attempting to clone the whole hard drive image to the new external hard drive. PC powered down twice lat night when half way through the routine, restart resulted in disk checker running. Here's hoping I can maintain power tonight for the hour or so needed....
