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Your computer(s)

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Ivo

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8 Jan 2010
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7,307
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Bath (or Southend)
My desktop computer, which has not had an active Internet connection for quite some now, is ten years old today. It was an original XP-derived eMachines model, bought the day the XP platform came out for general retail - October 25th 2001. In fact, it probably runs better now than ever before (well, maybe not immediately before the summer)!

By contrast, I have had two laptops last less than three years between them (both Advent), and my interim one is pretty useless. I am due to receive a new Acer model on the 1st of November.

So what kind of machine(s) do you use? Do you have more than one as with me? Do you prefer Macs (no arguments about OS vs Windows vs etc please!)? Or... do you just use a Smart phone? And are you planning any upgrade any time soon? Do you particularly lik or dislike anything in particular? ...And so on.

Just a pooling of ideas really. Maybe if someone needs a new one they could use this thread for reference?
 
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R

RailUK Forums

Joined
9 Apr 2011
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317
Location
Over there
Yes, I do prefer Macs but have not had a desktop machine for over 10 years. I bought my first iBook laptop in 2001 and have now just bought my third (a macbook pro).

The first I gave to my daughter in 2004 when I upgraded from a G3 to G4, and the screen on the G4 packed up in June, so I dont think I have done too bad.

I do also have a PC laptop, although it was a cheap secondhand model that I bought some years ago in order to be able to run railway simulation software on.

I hate the Mac v Windows stupidity, as I see various advantages in both systems. It is just that I have grown up with Macs and feel more at home with them.
 

SS4

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Joined
30 Jan 2011
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8,589
Location
Birmingham
Desktop - Self Build about 2007
Laptop - iQon bought in early 2006, originally had Windows XP on.
Phone - HTC Desire (Rooted) , Running Cyanogenmod Nightly

I am a fan of neither Windows nor Mac and so I run GNU/Linux on both the desktop and the laptop, my distro of choice being Arch Linux.

I do not plan to upgrade hardware wise soon and since arch is rolling release I am always running the latest version so need not update the OS (until I cock up of course!). Consequently I need to ensure any hardware upgrades I may do in the future are linux compatible
 

chris89

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Joined
21 Dec 2009
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1,286
Location
West Midlands (Severn Valley)
I have a main desktop and a laptop.

The laptop is an Samsung R519 which is fine for light use etc.

Desktop though is what i use the most, use games, music etc from specs are:
(Selfbuild)
AMD Phenom II 965 (Quad Core)
Gigabyte 890FXa-UD5 (Rev 2.0)
Corsair Venagence 8gb 1600mhz
Powercolour HD4870s (1GB Ram) In crossfire
LG DVD-RW
3x 500gb HDD's
Enermax Galaxly 850w PSU
1x 1TB external Drive
A+ Black Pearl WRC case

Other things with desktop:
Logitech G15 Rev 2 (Orange) Keyboard
Microsoft Sidewider mouse (Original Razer one died after accidently spilling a tea on it)
Technics SU-V670 Amp with two M71 speakers
Razer Headset.

Using Windows 7 64bit and find it fantastic to use, no current planned upgrade maybe graphic cards in the new year but waiting and seeing so far.

What i dislike about my system, the tempature the graphics cards run at and the noise they produce. Also lack of decent ATI drivers recently and still broken OpenGL 2.0 on some games. Finially the refusal of Fallout 3 to run on the computer without crashing all the time due to ram and OS system.

Also have a smartphone, but use it as a phone. But it is an HTC Incredible S.

The Mac vs PC arguement is just stupid, i can see the benifits with both types of systems, i just prefer PC for various reasons and grew up using them. Both systems have people who use them that puts a bad name on either.

Chris
 
Joined
5 Feb 2009
Messages
1,012
Location
Milton Keynes
i have a 6-ish year old Acer Power f5 with a 3.4 GHz intel celeron D processor (single core), 1.5 GB ram, a 1GB graphics card, and a 500GB hard drive. it runs windows 7 brilliantly.

I also have a 3 or 4 year old samsung NC10 netbook running ubuntu 11.04 with gnome 3, and a samsung galaxy apollo (droid).

As regards to the operating system wars, I like windows (7 preferably) and Linux. I hate everything that apple have come out with.

I plan to build myself a new main PC soon though, I will be going for performance with a quad core processor, lots of ram etc.
 

Hydro

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5 Mar 2007
Messages
2,204
Novatech gaming build, i7 950, GTX 580, 6Gb RAM (Corsair DDR3 something or other)...does the job nicely.

Work give me a Lenovo ThinkPad. Nice enough, but enough restrictions on it to make it head bangingly awful.
 

HST Power

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Joined
25 Nov 2010
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3,704
I have a Presario CQ61 with ATI Mobility Radeon 4200, made by Compaq.

The graphical capabilities are not great but the computer has done fairly well. I could run RW2 (before the upgrade, not any more), Assasin's Creed, DRIV3R and UK Truck Simulator.

An Alienware laptop is on my list.
 

Nym

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Joined
2 Mar 2007
Messages
9,098
Location
Somewhere, not in London
Lets see...

At home, currently..

Dell Precision 360, mainly a headless server (Windows XP Pro)
Samsung NC10 Netbook, General Use (Windows XP Home)
Toshiba Satellite Pro somthing or other, runs simulations(Windows 7)

Not in use:
Tensator Call Forward Controller, (VIA 700MHz Atom System) (Puppy Linux)
Home built (13 years old) AMD Athlon 1700+ System (Windows Server 2000 / XP Pro)
IBM R52 Think Pad running (Ubuntu 11)
 

ainsworth74

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16 Nov 2009
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27,542
Location
Redcar
Two laptops and a desktop:

Laptop 1 (My main computer)

Kobalt G860 (Kobalt sadly went bust recently)

Intel i7 M640 2.80Ghz (Dual Core with Hyper Threading)
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5870 1GB GDDR5
4GB DDR3 RAM
500GB 7,200RPM Hard Drive
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

Haven't found a game yet that makes it struggle on anything other than ridiculously high settings.

Laptop 2 (My old computer)

Acer Travelmate 5720G

Intel Core2Duo T7300 2.0GHz (Dual Core no HT)
ATI Mobility Radeon X2500 256MB dedicated up to 1024MB with HyperMemory
2GB DDR2 RAM
160GB 5,400 RPM Hard Drive
Windows XP Home Edition 32-bit

This was a solid performer for me until I got my new one a year ago. As long as you weren't too ambitious with the settings it handled most games quite well. Still works fine actually only problems are the battery life is now about 5 minutes and it badly needs reformatting but I've lost the disk and can't be bothered forking out £90 odd for an OEM edition of Windows 7.

Desktop (My old old computer)

No idea what the exact specs are on this beast as it's last update was around 2004. All I can remember is that it has a Nvidia FX5200 card, an AMD Athlon processor and about 512MB SDRAM running on XP.
 

50041

Member
Joined
14 Dec 2005
Messages
414
I've used PCs at work for the best part of 2 decades but at home we have:

Old Dell Dimension - gathering dust
i5 iMac 27" - for working at home although we use PCs at work
Core2Duo MacBook Air - for leisure
iPhone 3GS - phone and portable web access.
 

Peter Mugridge

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8 Apr 2010
Messages
14,753
Location
Epsom
Mine is a custom build, currently three years old - replaced my previous computer which was then about nine years old and was also a custom build. Both were built by the same consultant, in fact.
 

causton

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Somewhere between WY372 and MV7
Currently have a HP Pavillion (I think) A6612 - was 2Gb, now 4Gb RAM and a 2.3GHz Athlon 4450e as my desktop. I also have an Acer Aspire One which is quite nippy despite only having an 1.6GHz Intel Atom CPU and 1Gb of RAM...

Upgrade? Well I'm ordering one on Friday as soon as the cheque from my savings account clears. Nothing special, mind ;)
 

ralphchadkirk

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20 Oct 2008
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5,753
Location
Essex
Laptop: Macbook Pro 13-inch, late 2009 model
Desktop: Dell Dimension 3100 (must have been bought around 2006?)
Phone: iPhone 4.

I generally prefer Macs to Windows, and I do like Apple products.
 

Minilad

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26 Feb 2011
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4,343
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Anywhere B link goes
I don't have a desktop machine but have a machine I use mostly at home and one for taking out and about
My home machine is a Mac Book Pro i5 15"
My out and about machine is a Mac Book Air 11" which is the dogs danglies
 

wintonian

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15 Jan 2010
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4,889
Location
Hampshire
+1 for Novatech most of my bits have come from there.

I have 3 PC's at the moment 2 being old builds and 1 Novatech basic laptop and a MSI wind notebook which is a bit kaput for some rason at the moment so needs looking at.

My main PC is:

Asus M4A78TE board
AMD 955 processor
4GB Corsair DDR3 RAM
2 DVD RW's
2 Samsung F4 2TB HDD's
1 Diamond Max 160 HDD (the 320 GB failed so need a new one)
ATI 6850 GFX card
Corsair 750-HX PSU (most expensive bit and defiantly won't blow up in a hurry)
Lancool dragon-lord PC-K62 case
a couple of blue cold cathodes to make it look nice :)

Need to get the hover out or buy a can of air though, had a look in it a couple of days ago when replacing the GFX card and it was starting to look like it had been in a museum.
 

starrymarkb

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4 Aug 2009
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5,985
Location
Exeter
I upgraded my rig this year (via Novatech)

AMD Phenom X6 (running at 3200MHz)
4GB Ram
ATI Radeon HD 5750
1TB and 750GB HDDs
2.1 Sound
Fata1ity PSU
Antec 300 case

Plans are to get more RAM and an SSD
 

chris89

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21 Dec 2009
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1,286
Location
West Midlands (Severn Valley)
SSD's are getting a lot cheaper now, which is very good but im not going to get any for a long time, rather get some Terabyte/ 2 terabyte drives since becoming dirt cheap now.

For ram suggest looking at scan.co.uk, ebuyer.co.uk, yoyotech.com etc. Since you can now pick up 8gb of ram from around £40 or so now, compared to earlier this year it was £80+ in the case for my ram :@

Chris
 

SS4

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30 Jan 2011
Messages
8,589
Location
Birmingham
SSD's are getting a lot cheaper now, which is very good but im not going to get any for a long time, rather get some Terabyte/ 2 terabyte drives since becoming dirt cheap now.

For ram suggest looking at scan.co.uk, ebuyer.co.uk, yoyotech.com etc. Since you can now pick up 8gb of ram from around £40 or so now, compared to earlier this year it was £80+ in the case for my ram :@

Chris

Tell me about it, mine was DDR2 to boot!


Abit IN9 32X-MAX WiFi nForce 680 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 (3.0GHz)
Kingston HyperX 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 6400C4 800MHz Dual Channel

Samsung 19" Widescreen LCD Monitor
1 Blu-Ray Reader
3 DVD RW's

1 x 500gb Samsung HDD
2 x Samsung EcoGreen F2 1.5TB Hard Drive SATAII 5400rpm
Nvidia 8500GT GPU (ancient but since S3K is the height of my gaming I'm good)
500W PSU. I can't find which one it is lol but it is blue

A cheap ass case :lol:
 

sutty

Member
Joined
15 Feb 2011
Messages
150
I recently upgraded from an ancient Advent laptop, it was dying a slow death with a good portion of the HDD in bad sectors.

It was an Athlon 3000+ 64 bit with a radeon 9600 gfx card. I'm going to rip it apart, mount the screen and use a winPE through USB to make it into either a 15" picture frame or mount it into a table :)

My replacement is a HP EliteBook - what a machine! 2.53GHz Core 2 Duo, 160 GB sATA hdd and 4GB RAM. It goes like the proverbial manure off a shovel, and it looks the bee's knees, which is good for upsetting willy waving laptop warriors on the train :P
 
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