New desktop advice

[anonymous-user]

[redacted]

[Captain_Morgan]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

Intel i5-2400 Cpu. That’s a 10-11 year old cpu, I suspect you’ll have a horrible time with it.

When looking at remanufactured / refurbished systems you need to consider the cpu generation, with intel the first two characters before the hyphen are cpu range, the first one/two after are the generation, i5-13xxxx is the current generation, i5-12xxxx is last year, i5-2xxx is 11 years ago.

It’s really a minimum of gen 7 to run windows 11, Microsoft stops supporting windows10 in 2025.

After those considerations you really want a ssd rather than a hdd.

Edited by Captain_Morgan on Thursday 29th December 20:14

[xeny]

I manage some machines of pretty much exactly this spec for an academic department with no spare budget. With an SSD they're fine for general admin/web browsing, but if I were spending money I'd consider something like https://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/asus-vivobook-15-... and plug the existing keyboard monitor and mouse into it.

[NMNeil]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

Refurbished always sends a shiver down my spine.
How the fk do you 'refurbish' a chip?
https://www.ebay.com/itm/360320064672

[ridds]

I wouldn't bother with a desktop these days.

A decent year old secondhand laptop would suffice with the added function of being mobile.

From personal experience ASUS and Lenovo are good. Steer clear of Dell and HP, Dell are too propriety with their hardware and HP suffer a lot of screen failures.

Others may have differing experiences.

[xeny]

Should be a case of install an app from the MS store. What is going wrong?

[xeny]

here you go https://www.howtogeek.com/822524/how-to-keep-your-... , but why choose to not have the extra screen space?

consensus is the built in AV is fine

[xeny]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

What CPU and how much memory is in this machine?

[snuffy]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

You can't drag an application to the desktop, you need to create a shortcut instead.

Right click on the desktop -> New ->Shortcut

Then browse to the application exe you want, for example, calculator: c:\windows\system32\calc.exe

[snuffy]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

One of these ?

https://www.argos.co.uk/product/1938827?clickPR=pl...

[V8covin]

ridds said:

I wouldn't bother with a desktop these days.

A decent year old secondhand laptop would suffice with the added function of being mobile.

From personal experience ASUS and Lenovo are good. Steer clear of Dell and HP, Dell are too propriety with their hardware and HP suffer a lot of screen failures.

Others may have differing experiences.

I replaced a desktop with a Beelink mini pc that cost £200 and couldn't be happier

[xeny]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

The issue is the 4GB of RAM. Going between a £100 refurbished machine and a custom overclockers build seems between the ridiculous and the sublime.

[mmm-five]

If you find you don't get along with the colourful glow, you can probably turn them off via a small button on top of the case (not the power button), or if it's a branded case/motherboard then there's probably some options in BIOS and/or software to do the same.

BTW, if your 'tech guy' is offering another 8GB for free, why are you waiting?

[Teppic]

If he's offering another 8Gb for free, take it.

[Mr Pointy]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

Easy:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=pc+bluetooth+adapter+...

The audio only versions are rather more expensive so i would try one of the TP-Link v5.0 ones first:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=audio+bluetooth+adapt...

And get that extra 8GB of RAM

Edited by Mr Pointy on Friday 20th January 18:04

[nebpor]

Nothing to do with gaming

Means windows can cache more files in memory and everything, including disk access, runs faster as a result

I payed 7.99 for a new TP-Link Bluetooth micro usb adapter from Amazon last week, to replace an older one which didn’t connect very easily

[Turtle Shed]

You should absolutely get the extra 8Gb added if it's free.

[Mr Pointy]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

This is getting stupid. you ask for advice, every single respondant has said "get the extra RAM" & now you want us to come up with reasons why.

You've been advised to get the RAM & pointed at Bluetooth adapters; do it or not. I'm out.