Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[tunnie]

It's a very valid point, they are hugely expensive for what they are. If it's only upstairs/downstairs then I'd say it's not worth it, your standard windows brick will be cheaper option.

MotherT has one of those new iMac's it's a beautiful thing, be my next choice for new desktop if I needed one. But these days the iPad for downstairs and occasionally borrowing of work laptop is fine 

[chrisgixer]

It's a very valid point, they are hugely expensive for what they are. If it's only upstairs/downstairs then I'd say it's not worth it, your standard windows brick will be cheaper option.

MotherT has one of those new iMac's it's a beautiful thing, be my next choice for new desktop if I needed one. But these days the iPad for downstairs and occasionally borrowing of work laptop is fine 

Yes it purely the accounts and tax returns that have any professional requirements, the rest is basic leisure use around the house, with the odd trip to her brothers or parents.

(Plus one forgetful "leave it in the car and have some scrotebag break in to steal it" episode. but ignore that )

[aaronjb]

Nope, full Office suite is available for Mac.

Except for Visio.. which annoys me immensely.

[tunnie]

Nope, full Office suite is available for Mac.

Except for Visio.. which annoys me immensely.

Ahh didn't know that, guess I'll need to install a virtual machine just for Visio then. 

That said I only use it around once a year   

[MR MISTER]

I don't know what visio is and, d'yer know what?, I'm glad I don't know.

[tunnie]

I don't know what visio is and, d'yer know what?, I'm glad I don't know.

Best not, it's for important people 

[AndyRoid]

I don't know what visio is and, d'yer know what?, I'm glad I don't know.

Best not, it's for important people 

By important people, I take it you mean the sort of person that spends 2 years at Uni getting a diploma in electronics and can't even crimp a connector on a cable at the end of it? 

[tunnie]

I don't know what visio is and, d'yer know what?, I'm glad I don't know.

Best not, it's for important people 

By important people, I take it you mean the sort of person that spends 2 years at Uni getting a diploma in electronics and can't even crimp a connector on a cable at the end of it? 

 

Which Uni was that?

I must confess it took me a few attempts first time I crimp'd an RJ45 cable 

[AndyRoid]

Which Uni was that?

I never did Uni Mark, I got my C&G 224 at Highbury College of Technology in Cosham back in 1983 while working for DER Television Rentals.

I must confess it took me a few attempts first time I crimp'd an RJ45 cable 

Took me a couple of goes to get a system that worked as well.

I now strip the outer insulation back a couple of inches, untwist the pairs and line the conductors up in the order they need to go in to the plug, cut the conductors back to length in one cut, and the cable slides in nice & easy after that.

[tunnie]

I found getting them all in as far as they should was the problem (queue dirty joke here) 

Fiddly job but quite satisfying 

[Kevin Wood]

Well, I did a B.Eng in electronics and (I kid you not) there were graduates who walked out with 1st class degrees where if you handed them a soldering iron they'd pick it up by the hot end.

Then again, universities aren't really about learning anything practical (as the government would do well to remember before trying to ram everyone down that route of further education).

[chrisgixer]

Oooooh if I was in room 101 the first thing to go in would be impractical idiots with no common sense. ESP the ones that know everything and know nothing on equal measure but get huge rates of pay by bullshitting their way up to other idiots that know even less.

We all have our strong and week points but if you've been through the entire education system and can't wire a bloody plug then something is seriously wrong.


You lot might think I can't spell. I can (mostly ) I just can't be arsed. The point is made,(quick fire posts aside ) if you lot want to dot the i's and cross the t's then excuse me while I go do something more interesting. Same with maths.

 But build make of fix something, and you have my I divided attention, especially if you get in the way. 


Business gets on my wick. No tradesman or technicians and you don't have a business. Yet the management get the pay grades and fail to manage to boot. Wtf?

[Kevin Wood]

Oh, don't get me wrong.. We need people who are good at thinking and useless at doing anything practical, we just don't need very many of them. 

As for managers.. The less competent they are the more you need to get a job done. The more you need, the bigger a hierarchy you have to put them in, so there are still company cars in the car park to make them jealous, etc.

[chrisgixer]

Oh, don't get me wrong.. We need people who are good at thinking and useless at doing anything practical, we just don't need very many of them. 

As for managers.. The less competent they are the more you need to get a job done. The more you need, the bigger a hierarchy you have to put them in, so there are still company cars in the car park to make them jealous, etc.

No problem with thinkers. Dreamers however...

[TheBoy]

Back OT.

Lets start with the basics first, rather than people calling out all sorts of shite without knowing the requirements. Sonys and Macbooks, I ask you!


I'm guessing this is primarily a business machine, mostly to run MS Office type apps, email and web. Not a consumer machine for playing games and watching films on.

Based on that, I would be looking towards an Ivy Bridge based i3 (Core i3-3xxx) or it (Core i5-3xxx). i7 overkill, and prone to reliability issues. If it brings it in budget, Sandy Bridge i3 (Core i3-2xxx) or i5 (Core i5-2xxx), the CPU itself isn't that different, but the graphics are down performancewise (compared to Ivy Bridge).

As hinted above, no discrete graphics, purely on reliability grounds. Use the Intel on CPU graphics. Battery gets a boost as a bonus.

RAM - 2-3Gb for 32bit Windows (can't use more than 3Gb anyway), 4+ for 64bit Windows. For the use I've assumed, no point going beyond 4Gb, it won't get used, and will zap the battery.

HDD - 1Tb? Have you been drinking? WTF for? If her work patterns need that amount of space (unlikely?), I'd be inclined to go with a smaller, faster drive (SSD, around 200Gb), and offline data to a cheap portable 2.5" external drive (2.5" so you don't need seperate power pack) - Windows (Business versions) can encrypt this, and the main drive, which I'm sure is a company requirement anyway?

Am I right in thinking she works from home a lot, but trundles into office fairly regularly? If so, portability is probably more important than a big, power sapping, hot screen? 'Elf and Safety will demand seperate monitors and keyboards - thats LAW! So you need a monitor port on laptop, and enough USB. Plus budget for a screen/keyboard/mouse.

On subject of budgets, Office is around £200 if you have to buy that out of the same budget.

In this case, I'd be looking at the more robust, servicable items from the likes of HP (Elitebook, Business etc, not Pavilion shite), Dell (Latitude) and Lenovo (Stinkpad) (despite my own personal objections to the Stinkpads). Not consumer oriented shite like Acer, ASUS, crApple, Tosh (as much as I love them), Sony, HP Pavilion and similar, and Dell Inspiron and similar. But you'll need to at least double your budget to just buy the base laptop, before SSDs, monitors, docks (if applicable), Office etc.


Are my assumptions correct, and am I near the mark?