Desktop V Laptop.

[pwdrive]

Hi Al, I agree with what you say, but due to house renovations I have no room for a tower system....just my radios, it's a dilema.....

Lawrence.

[Geaney]

I'm generally with the desktop camp for those who have the space and are interested in the upgrade path. My two main machines are a home built tower system which I use for most of my multimedia work and (sorry Paula) an iMac that is my day to day surf plus TV plus HI Fi system. I think I have about four laptops around the house running everything from W98 (on my oldest laptop - P2 166Mhz, 64mb memory) to Mandriva distro of the Compaq 'portable workstation'. One still has vista on it (not used much) and the other has W7 64bit. My work machine (day job) is a laptop but when I'm not traveling it's plugged into an external 23in flatscreen plus keyboard and mouse. My last impulse buy was the ASUS Transformer - sort of a cross between a laptop and a tablet (runs Android).

My next gadget (already written to Santa) is the HP Z1 workstation. At around $5,000 it will probably be a while before I get to add that to my list

I've built my own towers for many years and like the ability to upgrade and add stuff. So far my problems have been laptops (mostly disks & batteries dying) and the iMac has died twice in three years. First was disk crash (did that repair myself), second was graphics adapter died and that had to go to a repair place as I couldn't get the spare part myself.

So, it all comes down to whether you like getting under the hood as they say and if you have the space for the desktop machine.

Cheers, John

[Retired]

Hi,

Many thanks everyone for such a great response.

Thanks Joe for your input; you could always go mad and buy a new computer but I know what you mean and can understand your views in keeping costs down but still having a usable system whether desktop or laptop. I haven't yet reached the point of using my computer in bed although if I didn't sleep I could get on with more projects.

Many thanks Paula for the detailed and informative information. I've had no problems at all in using XP Home edition but I'm concerned that this will be phased out shortly causing Internet security problems if updates are no longer available? My last computer upgrade cost around £400 and was done by a very good local computer store. After paying this amount I did wonder if I had been sensible because I could have bought a completely new computer bundle with flat screen monitor for a little more outlay. I could build my own PC though as I've fitted a new mother board and chip previously and hard drives etc which are easy enough to install. It takes me about four hours to completely wipe my computer and then get it fully operational again; much of this time is spent with upgrades downloading (Service pack 3 etc).

I'm interested Paula in your comments regarding downgrading from Vista/7 to XP; I was considering upgrading to a more modern OS but now think perhaps I'll be better sticking with XP especially as I know it so well. A few years ago my brother bought a new computer and I set it up for him; I think it was Vista and the initial set up was very quick being automatic but I was alarmed by the fact that to back up Vista needed something like twelve CD's which took forever to sort out; put one CD in copy put another CD in copy; it gets boring by the time the last CD has gone in and I'm much older. I found it highly frustrating and I thought surely something better could be sorted out after all I paid around £75 for my XP and it came on a single disc.

My Compaq Presario was top of the range about 15 years ago costing £1,000 and had a massive 8 gig hard drive? My last upgrade was to 80gig and I've just checked to find my usage at the moment to be 27.4 gig. I download lots of music videos and movies but immediately convert them to DVD then delete from the computer so the hard drive is always kept less than half full. Photo editing is done using Gimp 2 which is a free download and I find incredibly easy to play around with.

Thanks Al, I already suffer many keyboard problems using my desktop so given the number of negative comments regarding a laptop keyboard then I think this one item alone is enough to convince me to stay with a desktop. At first I thought the problem to be the keyboard but after trying three new keyboards including a wireless one I now think the problem to be a software one; I'm using Office Pro 2003 and to be honest I reach the point where I could destroy the keyboard and computer as it drives me barking mad. I'm no whiz kid on computers and type with a laser finger; using one finger I can outrun the speed of the computer; it mistypes capitals; completely misses double letters and gets fed up taking its bat and ball home; I look at the keyboard whilst typing and the number of times I'm typing away without anything appearing on the monitor beggars belief. I have to constantly keep correcting spelling mistakes and some of the grammar suggestions are plainly downright stupid. This problem is compounded by the fact that most of my computer time is spent on typing text.

My chum Tony very kindly suggested I try out "Open Office" and my initial response whilst using it was very favourable but I need to get out of the habit of using Office Pro which loads automatically. This reminds me as I could actually delete Office Pro then use Open Office as default? Thanks Tony; I still intend to convert then I can compare both.

Many thanks David for your valued information. Portability isn't an issue with me because to put it plainly I seldom travel any distance from home and apart from enforced hospital overnight stays I've not spent a night away from home for the last 35 years. Bron and I have not had a holiday away from home for 35 years and don't feel the need for holidays as such.

£300 for repairs to a laptop David would have me on life support; I'm pleased you managed to get yours sorted free of charge. Space isn't an issue either; as you know David we have plenty of unused space around the bungalow and recently I've been trying to arrange things better. To this end I've just decorated the kitchen and hall. The kitchen is the kitchen but the hall has doubled up as my office for a number of years; during winter it is always warm in the hall as the free running central heating radiator is installed so I may as well use the heat that is already paid for. I think you sum up the initial question Desktop V Laptop very well David by suggesting that a laptop be regarded as an addition to a desktop and not a complete replacement.

Many thanks Tony; yet another condemnation of a laptop keyboard. I hope to follow your lead and obtain a 21" flat screen monitor in fact I feel this is a must given my huge old Compaq monitor which dominates the desk. I also agree that having a new computer built isn't any cheaper than buying off the shelf; once all the bits are added up together with the labour charge then its possible having a computer built can work out more expensive; my XP alone cost £75 which is quite a large sum to buy separately. I too like watching "You tube" videos so perhaps a faster system would aid download speeds; I suffer from "Buffering" at times making some videos un-watchable.

Thanks Lawrence; many modern items are disposable once they break and how sad it is that something as complicated as a laptop has such a short life span before ending up dumped; it's quite frightening.

Many thanks John; the desktop has come out of this supreme.

Everyone's input has been of great assistance to me and is much appreciated. I'll now stick with a desktop for a number of reasons. The majority of you condemn the laptop keyboard and this alone would put me off owning a laptop as my every day computer as I use my keyboard a great deal. The upgrading isn't such a big issue with me but is a very valid point extending to maintenance and repair which has also been brought up. It's a horror story to me when David mentions £300 repairs to a laptop. Assuming this repair to be carried out; how long until the next £300 repair because laptops are not easily repairable at home. It sounds very much like a laptop can be compared to a modern car; fine whilst working and under warranty but once the warranty expires you need deep pockets for future repairs.

The size of a laptop screen is also an issue with me because I like to "doodle" using drawing programs and the bigger the screen the better.

A couple of things not mentioned regarding laptops; do they have speakers and how are they powered?

I have a good reason for asking for comparison between both systems because I'm just about to start another project and the decision of whether to go desktop or laptop influences the project a great deal. The project is to design and build my own computer desk. This might sound an easy project; a couple of planks and a few big nails and job done? Chums have also kindly suggested buying a ready made desk or even a flat pack from Ikea. All suggestions have a great deal of merit and I've done a lot of web surfing; everything I've seen has been excellent value in fact I don't know how these companies can produce such items at very low prices; it would cost more to buy the materials than these desks are sold for. The long and short of it I have another saga coming on and there is no gain without pain. I want my new desk to be different and only my imagination governs what I can end up with. I'll add another thread very shortly as I intend to build the new desk in front of the world as work in progress; good or bad I'll give it my best shot but above all I think I'll gain a great deal more personal satisfaction from making my own desk than simply buying one. Now I'm in for it!!

Kind regards, Col.

[Skywave]

Col (Retired) wrote:
I've had no problems at all in using XP Home edition but I'm concerned that this will be phased out shortly causing Internet security problems if updates are no longer available.

It has been my experience that once a Microsoft OS has been declared 'no longer supported' and consequently deemed to be 'out-of-date' that it becomes less of a target for malicious software than the current offering. This, of course, could be merely anecdotal and if true, could be so for many reasons. Perhaps others here could confirm (or otherwise) my feelings about this . . . .

Al.

[Joe]

I've been told the same and my Windows 98 system has never had a problem. I know a few months ago somebody elsewhere was saying he used Windows 2000 on a system with no anti-virus software and hadn't had any issues either.

- Joe

[Yorkie]

Remember Win 3.1? Happy pre-internet days!

I built my first PC about 1993 and recall a chum who said 'Dont bother with a 42mB hard drive - go for a 105mB and get yourself the full 4mB of RAM he said and you'll be future roof'. Hah! Just another example to confirm that when you stare into crystal balls you see more balls than crystals. The Hard drive was £170 (equates to £260 at today's prices), and the RAM was £28 per mB - £112 in total = £170 at todays prices. (Could we ever have imagined that an 8gB flash drive that fits in your pocket would cost less than a fiver?).

W8 is imminent then no doubt before too long, W7 will pass into history. W8 seems to pander to the whims of the 'IpPad' fraternity and other tablet users, with its 'tile' appearance and touch-screen technology. I couldn't be less interested.

[Tedzed1]

W8 seems to pander to the whims of the 'IpPad' fraternity and other tablet users, with its 'tile' appearance and touch-screen technology. I couldn't be less interested.

Could not agree more David, I have tested the developer version of Windows 8 for the last two months, and to be honest, I think it is pants for
a main computer, you need a touchscreen to fully utilize it, so you don't need a crystal ball to see which way microsoft are heading.
I like windows 7 Ultimate, and have been using it for ages, but have no intentions of moving up to 8.

[Mark Hennessy]

I must admit that I'm disappointed at how much I like Windows 7!

Most of my home machines run XP, apart from an old workshop machine that has Win98 for doing DOS apps and for hardware applications that need direct control of ports. I like both these OSs for what they are, and have found them to be very reliable. For example, the Win98 machine hasn't had an OS reinstall since 1998, and that's despite having had many changes of hardware, including a motherboard upgrade. My XP machine was built in 2004 and also worked flawlessly. I reinstalled from scratch when I bought a bigger hard drive, but actually, I'm convinced there was no reason to do that. It's unfortunate that the IT professional answer to an OS problem is a clean re-install - I understand the economics, but it's not satisfying, and it also means the OS gets a bad reputation.

Without wanting to be too contentious, Windows operating systems simply do not "break". Rather, their users break them, either by visiting websites containing malicious code, or by downloading and installing software that is either badly coded or contains rogue code (or both!).

The problem with Windows is that by default, a user has admin rights over the machine. The attempts to fix this in Vista/7 with UAC have proved unpopular, and users often disable the warnings or ignore them - back to square 1!

I'm not wanting to bang the drum for Microsoft, but I do think that a lot of the criticism is OTT and unjustified. I've supported MS systems professionally and personally, and have been generally very impressed with the stability. And they are a lot easier to fix than the alternatives.

So why am I disappointed at liking W7? Simply, I didn't want to like it, because I didn't want to buy it!

About 2-3 years ago I decided to seriously try to get along with Linux, and all the evangelists said "Ubuntu". There's a lot to like about Ubuntu, but given the choice between XP or Ubuntu on a desktop system for everyday use (expert or non-expert user), it would be XP every time. Having extensively trialled it on several hardware platforms, XP always makes better use of the hardware (because the drivers are better - understandably), and runs much more responsively. In my experience, a PIII is a perfectly viable XP desktop machine, provided it's a quicker one, and provided you've got ¾GB RAM or more. A P4 is very very capable on XP - especially the later ones with HT - again, the more RAM the better. Meanwhile, using Gnome under Ubuntu, a PIII isn't fast enough to draw the desktop environment. Everything is really laggy. You click on a drop-down and wait 3 seconds while it's drawn on the screen. Even with well-supported graphics cards, the user experience is very poor indeed. My Ubuntu machine is a fast P4 - 3.06GHz with 2GB RAM - and it's only just usable. Although you can't use Firefox on it - you're forced to use Chrome (as discussed on anther thread).

There are people who can optimise their Linux installations with excellent results, but I'm not one of them! When I have more spare time, I'd like to have a go, but I'm afraid that the days of playing with OS installations for fun have long gone. To me, a computer is a tool, and the OS should perform optimally out of the box. Windows does - although yes, it can be made a lot better if you're so inclined. I'm building a PIII machine (optimised for minimum power usage), and hope to learn a lot more about Linux optimisation during that process - I'll no-doubt be seeking help and advice at that point.

I used to be quite good at Linux - I made it run on a 486 back in 1997, and it even ran X successfully. It was surprisingly usable too. But I just can't take to it now - the command line is appalling, and you daren't ask for help in Linux forums because of the "newbie vultures". I think that having to learn Open VMS a few years back has showed me how good a command-line environment can be

I'm dribbling all over Colin's thread. I apologise

[Yorkie]

I must admit that I'm disappointed at how much I like Windows 7!
There are people who can optimise their Linux installations with excellent results, but I'm not one of them! When I have more spare time, I'd like to have a go, but I'm afraid that the days of playing with OS installations for fun have long gone. To me, a computer is a tool, and the OS should perform optimally out of the box. Windows does - although yes, it can be made a lot better if you're so inclined.

One of the reasons that I scrapped my XP machine was that over the years it became slower and slower, and was made slower by installing Norton Internet Security. (Can't blame that on XP of course). I guess I could have taken everything off it re-formatted the hard drive and reinstalled what I needed, because I'd probably put stuff on over the years that slowed it down and was redundant to my needs. It reached the stage at which it was taking 15 minutes to boot up, which was ridiculous. I'd had the PC several years, it only had 1gB of RAM and a not very fast processor.

I have a chum who runs a little business building and repairing computers, maintaining office computers and networks, and just over two years ago I asked him to put this PC together for me to meet my needs. It has W7 and AVG (paid for) anti-virus/internet security and boots up in exactly one minute. On the rare occasions that I have problems, I give my chum a call and he's here the same day to sort it out while I get on with things that interest me.

There are those whose hobby seems to be playing about with various OSs, and who derive endless hours of fun from dabbling around with such things as Linux, but I'm not one of them. I'm no more interested in what makes my computer work or what to do if ever it doesn't, than I am about the engine management system under the bonnet of my car. I just want to turn it one and use it. Not interested in whizz bang processors, sound cards and video cards that are so essential to gamers, and not interested in downloading films and music - I just want a PC that's suited for home/office use, and that's what I got.

I understand why Microsoft was forced to stop bundling their own browser and e-mail software with their OSs because the default became Outlook and Explorer, but it's a bit of a nuisance, and users who wanted to could always install other browsers and e-mail facilities. I don't know to what extent Chrome, Safari, Firefox etc have made inroads into what was MS territory. Not very much would be my guess.

As to internet, I'm lucky to live in an area where there is only one landline ISP - KC 'Karoo' because while it promises up to 8mB speed, it rarely delivers less than 11mB. Poor old John ('oldjohn' that is) who lives just outside the KC supply area, continues to have difficulty getting a reliable connection and his internet has been down for days. All he gets when he calls his ISP is an answerphone when he calls them.

[Retired]

Hi,

Thanks Al & Joe; even if the risk regarding security is vastly reduced once an old OS is no longer supported it still worries me that there remains a risk. A while ago I subscribed to Cyberscrub Privacy Suite;

http://www.cyberscrub.com/en/

At the time I read the full Cyberscrub details and to be honest it really did scare me. I didn't know that all my old data that I had deleted still remained on my hard drive and to make matters worse this data was actually being used every time I used the computer; I'm certainly no whiz kid on computers but in basic terms when in-putting into the computer the input is made up of short chains and if the input is shorter than the actual chain old deleted data is added to complete the chain. You experts will be able to explain this much better so please excuse my ignorance.

To make matters worse there is free software available that will allow this deleted data to be easily retrieved from a hard drive. Personal details are not safe by simply deleting them. I confess I would rather be over cautious than be very sorry if something went wrong. About four years ago a neighbour had his online banking compromised through absolutely no fault of his own and eventually it was all sorted out but it caused him tremendous problems.

Thanks David for highlighting just how much things have changed since 1993. My first computer had around 8GB hard drive and cost £1,000; at the time this was top of the range. I'm happy with XP David and when my computer slows down I don't find it much of a problem to do a clean re-install taking around four hours; this makes the computer like new again and costs nothing. Our local computer store used to charge £35 for a clean re-install but since then I've learned how to do it and with XP it is straightforward. I'm on Virgin Media cable and the speed is 10mb but I'm informed the speed is shortly to be greatly increased at no extra cost to me. I do a lot of videos and movies downloading and believe this might be the cause of my computer slowing over time. When I first stated using the P2P site it contained lots of rubbish and as the items are so close to each other I think one day I must have clicked on a real nasty because suddenly I lost control of the computer; the screen went berserk and I ended up switching the power off; this was my first virus and I'll never forget it. I had to do a clean re-install to clear it. I detest my bi-focals and still select items I don't intend to select but now fortunately I don't appear to suffer any negative effects as I find Virgin security to be excellent. I think perhaps my days of free music videos and movies downloads could be coming to an end because the biggest site I used has been closed down. I won't go into detail as this is a no go area for any forum but possibly why my computer slows the way it does.

Many thanks Mark and you can dribble all you want over my thread as your input is most welcome and I'm taking notice of everything that is included; this is all knowledge and information for me and why I asked the question in the first place. I haven't a clue what Linux is and as for Ubuntu this sounds like an African tribe. Shows just how little I know about computers but I keep learning on a need to know basis. Like you Mark I too have always liked XP. I still retain my first ever Win98 and it is un-registered; when I bought the computer I didn't go online at first and when I finally did go online it cost a penny a minute as dial up; remember the old days?

I upgraded to 1.5GB RAM and I think the chip is 2.6GHz; with a clean re-install the computer is pretty quick but I feel it is now getting old and would like to change the lot converting to a flat screen monitor. I fully agree with you Mark as I too would expect a computer to work straight out of the box; plug and play? Surely a new computer could be made ready to work by simply plugging in and just entering a single registration code. Like David I don't really want to know things like Linux or Ubuntu; I just want a computer that works and is reliable whist being fast. When I buy a saw blade I don't know the tooth geometry of a triple chip; raker or hook blade; I just want a blade that will cut what I want it to so I ask for a suitable blade.

There are so many computers available from so many manufactures that I simply become bored after a while whilst surfing the websites and give up. At work we had a mainframe AS400 or some such like and a dedicated computer department; when I was given my own email address I used a Dell and the Dell was recommended by the computer department guru's so I've fancied a Dell for a while.

I appreciate everyone's input and many thanks for keeping it simple so that I could understand. I've little interest in playing around with computers or their OS; all I need is a fast reliable computer to cover my everyday needs; I always feel the more complicated things are the more there is to go wrong so I'm not after anything with lots of trimmings.

Around Christmas time seems best to buy a new computer because there are usually lots of bargains around. I'm not in a hurry but when I do buy another it will be a desk top and I'm designing my new computer desk allowing for an increase in size of the tower just in case extra space is needed.

Kind regards, Col.