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Zebu Fellenz
Joined: 21 Dec 2006
Posts: 2567
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| Posted: Wed Oct 10, 2007 11:35 am Post subject: DAD needs new PC |
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Hi Guys,
My dad is looking to get a new computer soon, PC not a Mac. He needs to be able to run the quickbooks programs and wants at least a 2Ghz. CPU, 1GB of ram and a 200-300GB HDD. He also wants a redundant backup and a small form factor.
Last he is looking to keep costs down, were farmers and don't have all that much disposable income to throw at technology.
He would also like to have it run XP if possible 
Any Suggestions,
Erik 
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Clarence
Joined: 08 Mar 2006
Posts: 3827
Location: Smith Mtn Lake, VA
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| Posted: Wed Oct 10, 2007 11:58 am Post subject: |
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http://www.dell.com/content/products/features.aspx/hot_offers_dt?c=us&cs=04&l=en&s=bsd
"Dell VostroTM 200 Slim Tower
Secure and scalable space-saving design in a 40% more compact chassis with DataSafe, to backup and protect your critical data."
$459 with 19" flat panel LCD
Several options for a larger and/or secondary hard drive or use Dell's DataSafe and/or purchase a separate external hard drive and just set it up to backup specified folders... e.g. My Documents and c:\DadsFiles
XP or Vista.
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Curt Palme
CRT Tech
Joined: 08 Mar 2006
Posts: 24396
Location: Langley, BC
TV/Projector: All of them!
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| Posted: Wed Oct 10, 2007 2:36 pm Post subject: |
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After having gone through a number of 'friends building computers for me to save a buck', I'd go with Dell as well. It arrived in WORKING shape, I paid a premium, but now almost 3 years later, for the first time it's crashing at random, about once a week. Not surprising considering it's on 24/7. I'll end up buying another one from them once this one dies completely.
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Mark_A_W
Joined: 15 Mar 2006
Posts: 3068
Location: Sunny Melbourne Australia
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| Posted: Wed Oct 10, 2007 10:32 pm Post subject: |
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"Not surprising considering it's on 24/7"
Well, try turning it off when your not using it. The reboot will help it, and you'll use less electricity.
At worst it may need a reformat.
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Curt Palme
CRT Tech
Joined: 08 Mar 2006
Posts: 24396
Location: Langley, BC
TV/Projector: All of them!
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| Posted: Thu Oct 11, 2007 2:56 am Post subject: |
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No, it's a memory issue. Over say 2 days time it will stop opening windows, or open blank ones. Once in a while I will get an 'out of memory' error, and if I close some windows (usually 10-15 are open), then I'll be able to open other ones. I've cleaned all contacts of the memory PC boards, hat seemed to solve it for a week, now it's doing it again.
The g/f is on top of it, but hasn't had a chance to run through it yet.
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garyfritz
Joined: 08 Apr 2006
Posts: 12088
Location: Fort Collins, CO
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| Posted: Thu Oct 11, 2007 3:48 am Post subject: |
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Sounds like a memory issue all right, but NOT a hardware problem with the RAM. That sounds to me like a Windoze installation that's gotten buried hip-deep in cruft, and it's eating up all the memory. Windows is terrible that way -- garbage piles up in all the corners and it just doesn't run like it used to. I can just about guarantee that if you put a new hard drive in it, installed a fresh Windows, and installed your software back onto it, you'd be amazed how fast the system runs. They sell a ton of new computers due to this, and many of them wouldn't have been required if the people had tried a re-install first.
Unfortunately there's not a real good way to clean out the trash without starting from scratch. You can get a registry cleaner, which will help, but the only real solution is a full re-install.
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