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My kids are homeschooled and most of it is done on our home computer. The computer, a 120MHZ Pentium, is now almost 8 years old and is constantly failing during boot-up, crashing, and doing other crazy stuff. Time for another computer. I may just buy one for the shop and use this one(now at the shop) for school.
Out of these three brands: Dell, E-machines, and Hewlett Packard, which is the best?
How do you backup your layout/ design files without putting them all on floppies?
Would a machine with a CD burner be better for that?
Also, I just put a 256mb RAM card in this computer (it had only 128). When I first put the new memory in, it said there was only 128mb of RAM until I had booted twice. System recources then showed that there is 256mb of RAM. So, I put the original memory card(128mb) back in but in the second slot. I have since re-booted twice but it is still recognizing only 256mb of RAM. Shouldn't it now be 384?
[ January 19, 2003, 03:15 PM: Message edited by: Wayne Webb ]
-------------------- Wayne Webb Webb Signworks Chipley, FL 850.638.9329 wayne@webbsignworks.com Posts: 7405 | From: Chipley,Florida,United States | Registered: Oct 1999
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Of the three, Dell has the best support that I know of.
Personally, I've been buying SystemMax computer from TigerDirect.com because of the way the computers are put together with off-the-shelf parts. If something fails, I can fix it myself.
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Hi Glenn, The shop computer I'm typing on is a Tiger. I've had less trouble with it than my Mom has with her Gateway and my Sister with her Compaq. I guess sometimes "name brand" doesn't mean a thing.
-------------------- Wayne Webb Webb Signworks Chipley, FL 850.638.9329 wayne@webbsignworks.com Posts: 7405 | From: Chipley,Florida,United States | Registered: Oct 1999
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Stay away from E-machines, they are junk. HP's aren't too bad but very proprietary on parts.
I used to build computers but got sick of fixing them all the time so I bought a Dell with a 3 yr. on-site warranty. I had a bad hard drive several months after I got it and they were here next business day to fix it. Hard drives are junk no matter what machine or manufacturer. They just break!!
A CD burner is great for backing up files and such. Something else you could consider is using the hard drive from the old computer in the new one for backups.
I got a USB hard drive for Christmas and made two partitions on it. I use it primarily for backups and plan to put all my fonts on it to free up some resources.
Hope that helps!
-------------------- Amy Brown Life Skills 101 Private Address Posts: 3502 | From: Lake Helen, FL, USA | Registered: Feb 2001
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dude..get a dell...i've got 3 in my office...the cd burner is a good thing too...that's what i use for backups and bring them to my safety security box.
-------------------- Karyn Bush Simply Not Ordinary, LLC Bartlett, NH 603-383-9955 www.snosigns.com info@snosigns.com Posts: 3516 | From: Bartlett, NH USA | Registered: Jan 2001
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As Karyn said...Dude, I got a Dell...Ok it is a used one but it still pretty cool. The guy that I buy my computer equipment from works for a large communication corporation and every 6-8 months they upgrade to the latest and greatest, since he's the guy who does this, they sell him all the used stuff and he in turn, sells to others. (don't you love free enterprise)
My latest Dell is a sweet little ol' black 6-mo. old Dell Optiplex GX240, one owner, low miles only driven to church functions and boy scout meetings. it has a 1.8 ghz under the hood with twin 40 HDs. The best part is if I have any problems, it's covered by the computer guy! This is my 3rd computer from him.
CD BURNER is almost a must! Extra HD is great for storage.
-------------------- Michael Clanton Clanton Graphics/ Blackberry 19 Studio 1933 Blackberry Conway AR 72034 501-505-6794 clantongraphics@yahoo.com Posts: 1737 | From: Conway Arkansas | Registered: Oct 2001
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wayne, i built ever computer ive ever had, and have had no problems. i built hennie a 900mgz ATHLON last xmas(she had an old 200 mgz)i got her a new ATX case, new motherboard, 900 CPU, new ATI 32meg video card, and a IWILL KK333 motherboard, all for less then $300 delivered at my door. i put it all together(with existing HD, CD-ROM, MODEM,monitor, floppy and ram from her old machine)and its been running everyday since .....she had a problem yesterday somehow it lost the mouse, i disconnected mouse and pluged it back in, and its fine. iam building me a new one for me, 1.7 ATHLON XP, KK400 IWILL M/B, 128 megs of DDR 333 ram, new tower case and its $200 bucks dropped at my door. as for operating systems...WIN 98SE is all you need. XP is ok if you want an OS that is full of other programs for cd burning,video editing and such. as for backing up cd-rw is your best way to go you can copy all your files that you dont want to lose to a dir..then burn it on a cd.
-------------------- joe pribish-A SIGN MINT 2811 longleaf Dr. pensacola, fl 32526 850-637-1519 BEWARE THE TRUTH.....YOU MAY NOT LIKE WHAT YOU FIND Posts: 11582 | From: pensacola, fl. usa | Registered: Nov 1998
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Concerning processors, I am now running a Pentium III 500MHZ. The new computer will most likely have a Pentium 4 or Celeron CPU in it. What are the differences and which is the best/fastest. I was told by one of the techs at Aries Graphics that AMD processors were somewhat lacking in the "math coprocessor" department which is important for running CAS programs. How does it perform on your machine?
Also, I just added 256mb of memory to this computer (it had only 128). When I first put the new memory in, it said there was only 128mb of RAM until I had booted twice. System recources then showed that there is 256mb of RAM. So, I put the original memory card(128mb) back in but in the second slot. I have since re-booted twice but it is still recognizing only 256mb of RAM. Shouldn't it now be 384? I booted it up again this morning and it's still showing only 256.
-------------------- Wayne Webb Webb Signworks Chipley, FL 850.638.9329 wayne@webbsignworks.com Posts: 7405 | From: Chipley,Florida,United States | Registered: Oct 1999
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Wayne, the Celeron/P4 question came up recently on a TechTV show. The answer was that the Celeron doesn't have the built-in memory that the P4 does so even at a faster clock cycle it doesn't perform as well as a slower P4.
I put AMD cpus in the last two computers and had no problems, except with a version of Signlab that was fixed in an update. They usually have more memory than the Pentium counterparts but the battle goes back and forth. I doubt that you would see any difference.
You need to look at your motherboard book and see if it supports the memory combination that you're trying.
-------------------- Jim Upchurch Artworks Olympia WA Posts: 797 | From: Olympia, WA | Registered: Nov 1998
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I think Jim's right about the combination of ram chips with that board, I ran into that before as well. you may need same size chips &/or same brand. With 512 meg chips at Costco for $49 I just boosted both my computers to 1024 megs of ram for $100 each & sold my old chips back to the guy that rebuilt one of them for me.
I agree that e-machines would not be your best bet, & even a good HP or a great Dell may not be as ideal or customizable as having something custom built like OP just did. Thats basically what I just had done also.
My old Pentium 233 w/ 128 ram is now the same tower, floppy drive, & power supply. I also left the 10 gig hard drive in for temporary storage of job files (I burn archives to CD, but if I clean up files that are not in use every month or two onto the second drive, I can procrastinate the cd burning a little longer.) I got a 120 gig drive at Costco for about $150. The computer guru I hired got me an AMD 1.3 gig processor & a compatible motherboard for another $150. I also put in a $70 DVD-CDRW combo drive so I can read the DVD archives I burned on my Sony Vaio, as well as burn cd's on it.
The Sony was a great machine for home use, but trying to make it my office computer required partitioning the drive to get W98 on it for my older sign software. That & other issues related to the various pre-installed software made it never quite suit me for work. I did enjoy burning a second copy of my job-file CD archives onto DVD though. About 8 CD's to one DVD. I have since un-did the w98 partition & ran the system recovery discs to get the Sony back to new condition. It is my home machine where I am typeing this post with my morning coffee. I even rented a DVD to try out that feature. Awesome!
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the only difference between a celeron and a non celeron chip is.....
the cache levels. The celeron has less on board cache. This difference will never be noticed to the average user. Heavy usage of graphics (gamers) and rendering programs will show slightly slower reaction times.
But now with high speed chips. You will never see the difference.
There is the law of diminishing returns. Higher speed chips real really great. However, most users will not really notice the difference between a 550 to 800. The notice comes when you goto a P4 chip change the speed of the bus from 100 to 400. Now you really see faster results.
-------------------- Leaper of Tall buildings.. If you find my posts divisive or otherwise snarky please ignore them. If you do not know how then PM me about it and I will demonstrate. Posts: 5278 | From: Im a nowhere man | Registered: Jul 2001
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CELERON chips are ok for the home/bookkeepin/letter written/playing solitare computer. its not only cashe but bus speed. celerons bus at 100 max.....whereas a P4, ATHLON cpu can run m/b's with a front side bus of anywhere from 66/83/100/133/200/266/300/400. this is what makes a computer fast of slow, most celerons are slow. i got laptop 433 celeron, and i got my work computer is an old CYRIX 350. the 350 runs about 2 times as fast as the laptop, but the laptop will load programs faster. wifes computer is a 900 ATHLON, and it runs rings around both mine. all have 128 megs ram each.
-------------------- joe pribish-A SIGN MINT 2811 longleaf Dr. pensacola, fl 32526 850-637-1519 BEWARE THE TRUTH.....YOU MAY NOT LIKE WHAT YOU FIND Posts: 11582 | From: pensacola, fl. usa | Registered: Nov 1998
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quote:So, I can't put the new 256mb memory next to the original 128? It has to be either twin 256's or twin 128's?
I'm no expert, but I don't think it's that cut & dry. I believe some boards will accept such a combination & others won't. I would try to search for the manufacturer of your motherboard on-line & find info from them.
Tape back for automated tape copies. On Friday I connect my laptop to the network and copy accounting and management files. Bi-weekly I copy art files. The tape backs up every night at 11:00 pm all important files on the server. I take the backup tape home every night.
Posts: 121 | From: Indianapolis, IN | Registered: Feb 2001
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wayne you might have 2 different types of ram....not different but ram has a run speed, iam assuming your 500mgz machine uses SDRAM, now what was installed in the computer, might be say 100 nanosec speed, and the ram you bought is 70 nanosec. this will cause it nor to se one or the other.......older machines had to have 2 bars of ram to run. the new ones dont.....but they all have to be of the same nano speed.
-------------------- joe pribish-A SIGN MINT 2811 longleaf Dr. pensacola, fl 32526 850-637-1519 BEWARE THE TRUTH.....YOU MAY NOT LIKE WHAT YOU FIND Posts: 11582 | From: pensacola, fl. usa | Registered: Nov 1998
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