Upgrade or new computer???

[avnetguy]

Honestly, if his current preferences for gaming are Minecraft, then i would expand upon the above point and say to not worry about graphics at all. Save the money from getting a higher end system and if your son decides to go hardcore gaming, deal with it later. You'll get a faster card for less money down the road anyway. The only problem with that is the aforementioned issue on power supplies.

That was basically my point, the i5 with 4600 intel graphics will probably do just fine and for under $500, the acer is a pretty good system. Of course you always have the option of dropping in a better video card later on. The acer also has a slightly higher rated power supply than the lenovo so unless you get into some really power hungry (high end) video vards you should be fine. Worst case, spend another $50-75 later on for a reasonably good power supply if the video card you pick requires it.

 

[haraldo]

How bad is Windows 8? Is it really that bad or is it just Techie geeks over complaining?

To me it's really bad...... but it seems Microsoft will do an update now so you can get the legacy UI, so then it's better....

You can't stop the world, so essentially you will have to get to win 8, though....

 

[haraldo]

If you get a used laptop, I would reinstall windows, and Don't use OEM versions of windows, they're crap, with loads of software and added utilities that does nothing else but slow you down. HP Windows is the worst....

If you can use Microsoft version of windows, it's by far the best.
And don't install anything else than what you really need, many of these feautures and nice utilities install services that in the end ends up hogging the machine down....
After installing windows, you should do a repeated defrag, over and over and over again, even still if you have an ssd

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

I don't know which or how many bottles of aquavit haraldo has been drinking posting that at 4:43am, but one should NEVER defrag SSD - a) useless b) damaging to the ssd

 

[Rickster71]

......... you should do a repeated defrag, over and over and over again, even still if you have an ssd

Hi Harold, would you go into a little more detail on that.
My understanding, was to never defrag an SSD. A defrag can be damaging. Each cell in an SSD can only be written to so many times. There are algorithms in an SSD's controller that help to spread the data out over the entire drive so that you are not writing to the same cell over and over again while there are other cells that don't ever get written to.
A defrag is constantly reading and writing data to move it around the drive and can severely impact your wear leveling.

Is your's brand new info?

 

[Irvrobinson]

Hi Harold, would you go into a little more detail on that.
My understanding, was to never defrag an SSD. A defrag can be damaging. Each cell in an SSD can only be written to so many times. There are algorithms in an SSD's controller that help to spread the data out over the entire drive so that you are not writing to the same cell over and over again while there are other cells that don't ever get written to.
A defrag is constantly reading and writing data to move it around the drive and can severely impact your wear leveling.

Your understanding is correct. There also isn't a significant performance advantage to an SSD that has been defragmented versus one that hasn't.

 

[haraldo]

Hi Harold, would you go into a little more detail on that.
My understanding, was to never defrag an SSD. A defrag can be damaging. Each cell in an SSD can only be written to so many times. There are algorithms in an SSD's controller that help to spread the data out over the entire drive so that you are not writing to the same cell over and over again while there are other cells that don't ever get written to.
A defrag is constantly reading and writing data to move it around the drive and can severely impact your wear leveling.

Is your's brand new info?

yeah, I seen this too that you should minimize writing to SSD's and never do defrag, but it's a fact that if a file is severely fragmented it will be slower, if the "window turn rate" is getting high, it means the kernel file system driver changes access paths to another location.... in a normal disk it's another physical location while on an ssd it's not... still it's another location....

Still would be interesting to see figures about these things.....

How about linux and ext3, ext4 file systems, every time you access a file it's being tagged to show the last access time, unless you flag the file system with "noatime", does that not create significant writes to the file system?
How about pagefile on an ssd disk, does that not create significant writes to the file system?
maybe you should never put a database on a system with ssd, there is so much writing to the logfiles, that it will kill the ssd

I had ssd's in my laptop's for quite many years now and never seen any of these issues....

Have to go, need another one:

 

[Rickster71]

My understanding was to only put the OS on an SSD and the rest on a standard drive.
That's how I have mine FWIW.

Sorry for the derail Doug.

 

[STRONGBADF1]

I tell you one thing...I HATE that you can't click on to a sight dealing with computers without being asked if you want to take a survey or chat with a representative!

 

[haraldo]

I tell you one thing...I HATE that you can't click on to a sight dealing with computers without being asked if you want to take a survey or chat with a representative!

They will call you back in 5 mins

 

[STRONGBADF1]

Thoughts? Staples.com®

 

[STRONGBADF1]

My understanding was to only put the OS on an SSD and the rest on a standard drive.
That's how I have mine FWIW.

Sorry for the derail Doug.

It's all good! I haven't thought about computers for so long I feel stupid on the subject. (I always was but ignorance is bliss!)

 

[STRONGBADF1]

I'm not opposed to getting him a laptop. If not too much more money. Can you upgrade graphics memory in a run of the mill laptop?

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

I'm not opposed to getting him a laptop. If not too much more money. Can you upgrade graphics memory in a run of the mill laptop?

not graphics or it's memory, only main memory (not always, but very often)
You'll get better value with desktop and you could always add pcie video card later on

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

Thoughts? Staples.com®

I prefer acer over dell - Amazon.com: Acer DT.VFFAA.003;VM2611G-UI3324X Desktop: Computers & Accessories
These are really nicely built machines

 

[Adam]

I've been happy with my HP desktops. They always seemed like a good value to me. I checked their site yesterday, and they didn't seem like steals to me. I tend to buy from them when they have big-dollar "coupons" that save hundreds of dollars, but you're on a time table. That, and you couldn't get one shipped from them soon enough for his b-day.

 

[Adam]

I feel so innocent and ashamed. It didn't occur to me until just now that he might simply be looking to get faster p**n-surfing. The machine is fine - upgrade your internet.

 

[Nemo128]

Personally, if it's a gaming PC I'd build it. General use PC, buy the cheapest Dell you can get or look for a deal somewhere. Real gaming PC, you can build for less than the big names will supply. It's mostly because the cheap machines are made in mass quantities. The one-off gaming PCs aren't made in mass so they mark up every upgrade.

 

[Grador]

I will warn you about dell desktops: they use non-standard power supplies. The other's may as well but I know from personal recent experience.

 

[Irvrobinson]

yeah, I seen this too that you should minimize writing to SSD's and never do defrag, but it's a fact that if a file is severely fragmented it will be slower, if the "window turn rate" is getting high, it means the kernel file system driver changes access paths to another location.... in a normal disk it's another physical location while on an ssd it's not... still it's another location....

The next block accessed in a file is always in "another location". It's a matter of what's the variance between the random access time and the sequential access time, and with an SSD there isn't a significant variance, hence defragmentation doesn't have much of an impact, so I don't know where you're getting your facts from.