Cheap family pc wanted (£400 max!)

My dads pc is on it's last legs, I could format it and give it a few extra months, but it is pretty strawberry floated!

Anyway need a new computer, nothing too fancy, as it is mainly used for browing the internets, and the occasional word document.

A few specs needed.

Dual/quad core (Don't really know why, it just seems logical to have it!)
3/4 gig ram
A big hard drive
Windows 7

the rest is not essential, although others will be considered like moniters and packages alike, this will not be used for gaming so nothing really needed on the card front.

Personally, I've found putting a fair chunk of RAM in older machines (particularly machines which are used for light duties, such as this one) will often give them new legs... especially if those machines have integrated graphics and less than a gig of RAM. I wouldn't replace the entire machine unless the actual hardware is faulty.

Check Crucial.com - it can usually suggest suitable RAM. Invest in an extra hard drive and put the fresh install on that (that way, no data in the old install is actually lost and can be copied across at leisure). Invest the rest of the cash a low level dedicated graphics card (nothing fancy, maybe £30 or so - having dedicated RAM rather than system memory is a big performance booster) and a big new monitor, and you'll probably still come out with a reinvigorated computing experience, and with a fair chunk of your budget saved.

We've got a Celeron D Packard Bell downstairs I purchased nigh on 5 years ago which is still performing the same kind of tasks, and the only upgrade I've made to it over the years is extra RAM.

It's not just the ram in this that needs replacing, it's pratically everything, the sound card on the motherboard is buggered, the processor is about 7 years out of date, It needs a good nuking due to all the gooseberry fool from previous installations that can't be removed due to a dodgy virus!

We have looked down that route, but it's time for a new one, this one is nearly dead and I have tried everything (that I can be bothered to do!) to fix it! It is like 7 years old as well!

In regards to a graphics card and a moniter, for the purpose the pc serves it's not really needed, as it is mainly an internet browing pc, that said, if I load up youtube now, the pc would freeze and i'l have to restart firefox.

Also it takes me at least 20 minutes to reset the pc, to a state where it's remotely usable (so it's pretty much kept on all the time!)

JiggerJay wrote:In regards to a graphics card and a moniter, for the purpose the pc serves it's not really needed, as it is mainly an internet browing pc, that said, if I load up youtube now, the pc would freeze and i'l have to restart firefox.

Also it takes me at least 20 minutes to reset the pc, to a state where it's remotely usable (so it's pretty much kept on all the time!)

Sounds like a combination of RAM and spyware to me.

What happens if you turn off all the startup programs? You should get a significantly quicker boot.

(Also, a cheap dedicated graphics card - even something crap like an old Geforce 4 if you have something like that sitting around - will stop you losing more system memory to your onboard graphics, plus even the cheap ones should support hardware decoding of media content.)

However, if you're determined to take the easy way out, take a squizz at Ebuyer. If raw performance isn't a concern, just about any of the cheap desktop boxes they have should do.

Cheers for the advice turnip, we have tried spyware programs quite frequently, but they can't find anything out of the ordinary.

Also the sound card has been dead for a few weeks, and it's an onboard one as well.

Anyway we took the plunge and ordered this.
http://www.pcworld.co.uk/martprd/produc ... e-centre-3

It's not spectacular by any means but it'll do the job we need it to do just fine, the one you linked me to looked quite nice, but my ebuyer account is suspended due to them ripping me off ages ago!

Eh, it was more of a random pick than a serious suggestion anyway. With the requirements you have for it, you could probably have got away with a cheap Atom based PC.

Indeed, the Atom has some serious advantages, not least of which is it's basically insignificant power draw. But even the double cored atoms don't have a lot of CPU grunt.

Could try a top-end netbook, actually, yeah.

We've never attempted to share a laptop between a family, In all fairness it wouldn't be something my dad would be interested in becuase he has it in his mind that netbooks/laptops all have shitty build qualities and are pretty much unrepairable if they get a hardware fault!

Cheap family pc wanted (£400 max!)

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