Computers

[Tint Guru]

Win 8

I have had nothing but bad things to say about windows 7. They want to rebrand another vista as win 8? No thank you.

I believe I love my XP as it works.

When it comes to computers, building them is not that hard.

When a sales rep asked me to check out HP large format printers, I literally laughed in his face. I told him "Of the three HP products I bought in the last three years, they all broke down within 6 months. Why would I consider buying something they make that costs THOUSANDS of dollars?" He had no response.

(for the sake of argument, that would be a HP 4310 all in one, HP 5510 (?wireless printer, lasted 3 months) and a HP Laptop 8550 (?). )

Truth is, its far easier to look at it like this: ALL pre-built computers come with 'bloat-ware', software that you don't need and they hope you'll register/use........Or you build a custom computer and install exactly what you need. Your the only person that can answer that.

IMO if you actually own that software and keys to re-register it, you'd be a fool to buy anything in a box. CP

 

[Atomic DNA]

Just moved up to an 8 core Macpro from an old PowerPC G5 circa 2004. Going to be taking the memory up to 32 gb next week and the G5 only had 6. Compared to the Macpro, the G5 is a turd. Still, to get 8 great years out of the G5 is nothing to complain about.

 

[SignProPlus-Chip]

You will not get a better bang for your buck than building a system yourself. I have been assembling my own since 1998.

I'm in the middle of choosing components for a future build myself. This will be for my graphics workstation.

Looking forward to a solid state drive to put my OS on. It's a great setup, turn the system on and you have your desktop up in just a couple of seconds. Install your programs to a partition on the same drive, and everything is really "snappy".

Going with a 1TB drive for general shared file storage over the network too.

Still trying to settle on a graphics card though, pretty sure about going with an Intel i7 2600 3.4GHZ CPU though.

All totaled I'll probably have $1200 into it when all is said and done. But the efficiency I'll gain from not having to wait for certain functions to process in Pshop or Flexi etc...will be worth it, plus I'm building a bit on the higher end to ensure the system will serve me well for a few years. I have found if you go too "middle of the road" with a build, you'll be replacing components to keep up with new software demands earlier and more often.

 

[visual800]

I have just purchased a dell xps 8300, as far as dell falling apart I dont see it. The 8300 is a steady running machine and I have had no issues with illy or flexi or anything on it, windows 7 can suck it though wish i was back on xp.

Ive said before all comps have the same chinese parts in them all the others do. I dont need a $2000 computer to run this sign and design stuff, it makes no sense to me, to each his own.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

I have just purchased a dell xps 8300, as far as dell falling apart I dont see it.

When people are talking about dells failing apart (or any store bought computer) they are talking about the consumer quality level (more then likely). Which ironically is the same level that they usually compare to Macs.

The 8300 is a steady running machine and I have had no issues with illy or flexi or anything on it, windows 7 can suck it though wish i was back on xp.

I have two optiplex machines, a GX 620 and a 780. GX 620 was a gimmie that I use for office related stuff (internet, email, Libreoffice etc). It had XP, but I quickly installed Linux on that thing. I hate XP with a passion. The 780 strictly runs my gammill machine and that uses Win 7 Pro.

If you are having issues with Win 7 then it has to be on your end. It is a solid OS, light years ahead of XP. I even preferred Vista over XP, but Vista did have it's issues until the latest SP, then it was pretty well stable as long as you had a good amount of resources.

Ive said before all comps have the same chinese parts in them all the others do.

They might have some parts that happen to be made in China, but quality will vary like anything else. So It's hard to say that they are the "same" parts.

I dont need a $2000 computer to run this sign and design stuff, it makes no sense to me, to each his own.

It's about efficiency and ROI. If it takes you less time to do something, but your charge is the same, that's more money. Last store bought computer I had, when I was dealing with intricate logo crests, every time I just moved an object or scaled it up or down, it took 10 minutes for a new render. The bigger the file, the longer it took. I couldn't run any other program will it did that new render as well.

I can give more examples, but a lot of them are going to be specific to me, moreso then others on here, so there wouldn't be much point in my mentioning those.

 

[fixtureman]

I have been happy with the Powerspec brand of computers from Microcenter. I see there is a Microcenter in VA not sure how far it is but you can check online.

 

[SightLine]

......
Truth is, its far easier to look at it like this: ALL pre-built computers come with 'bloat-ware', software that you don't need and they hope you'll register/use............

Far from factual... Professional business class systems I guess do not fall into the "ALL" part of that. Yes pretty much "ALL" computers intended for home users do. Many business class and almost "ALL" Professional Workstations from builders like Signburst and yes Dell, HP, IBM do not come with preload bloatware. They are also build with a totally different grade of components that off the shelf consumer and build it yourself systems made from "gamer" components.

Instead of rehashing it all over again I figure links to a couple of the recent threads is easier. I stand by my opinion that consumer grade computers and components are generally nowhere near the reliability of business class components.

http://signs101.com/forums/showthread.php?t=88853
http://signs101.com/forums/showthread.php?t=94529

I'm not saying you will not get lucky and have a consumer grade system last for many years running 24x7 365 in a business but the odds are higher with professional systems and the level of support and service on pro systems is nothing at all like home user crap. Our Dell Precisions, had a drive fail a few years back. Call Dell business support, on the phone less than 5 minutes. New drive was at our doorstep via Next Dair Air, no questions asked. Had I requested they woudl have sent a tech to install it as well.

 

[Brad Knight]

We've moved to to laptops - good laptops - mine is a 2 year old Acer with a dual core i3 processor - my wife has a new Acer ultra book i5 processor.

The idea is that we can travel well with them - all of our work files are on a server so that we can access them from any computer, and if we're working in the office, we can plug the laptop into a large monitor and work from it. It gives us a lot of flexibility, we're essentially using the processor - the video processors, even on the laps tops, are more than enough for the majority of the stuff we do. Most of the stuff we do, image processing is actually CPU dependent. Storage can be put on a network and expanded as needed - and laptops can be replaced as needed every couple years as they come out with newer generation processors (which would generally need new motherboards with new chipsets on a purpose built desktop).

... and you can't take a desktop on vacation.

 

[WCSign]

+20 on building your own, I have a Frys close and have built a few, for graphics, video and general use

its really not that hard, and once you do it, if something goes wrong/bad (besides a HD crash) you canpretty much take it apart and rebuild yourself and not lose any info.


I had a windows 7 beta version on a nice custom CPU, then windows didnt offer an easy way to upgrade or register, so I just bought a new terabyte HD and installed it with a brand new copy of 7 once it was retail available, so now I have 2 os on this PC and that saved my *** recently.

This CPU stays at my house, I use it for websites and graphics. Basically the adobe suite. recently i had a friend staying who was using my PC to "look for a job" Well in the process of that, he DL a virus on there and the whole thing started crashing. It was one of those deals where they want to make you buy a program to fix it, but really you are just buying thier fix to remove thier virus.

lucky for me, I could log into the original windows 7 OS, download nortons, save it to the desktop on the infected OS and then relaunch that, then start up nortons. cleaned it up and im back on track.

THEN, he did the same damn thing to my laptop!!!! SMH

before anyone asks, no I never had nortons, because ive NEVER gotten a virus on a PC that I was the sole user of..lol

Sorry that was an off topic story

 

[Si Allen]

Arrrrggghh! He did it to a 2nd computer?

Did they later find his body in the woods?

 

[visual800]

If you are having issues with Win 7 then it has to be on your end. It is a solid OS, light years ahead of XP.

Uh no its not. its more aggravating and the picture viewer crashes all the time. Xp caused me no issues. 7 has some damn COM SURROGATE thats always crashing when I view jpgs.

They have added stuff to 7 thats just a longer way to navigate around things than it was in xp. Im getting used to it, of course, but Im the kind that wonders why they have to mess with things if they arent broke

when I got my machine i priced other sources as far as barebones building, do it myself I just did not see where I would come out financially better. i was figuring the exact same components that was on the dell.

 

[SignBurst PCs]

Uh no its not. its more aggravating and the picture viewer crashes all the time. Xp caused me no issues. 7 has some damn COM SURROGATE thats always crashing when I view jpgs.

They have added stuff to 7 thats just a longer way to navigate around things than it was in xp. Im getting used to it, of course, but Im the kind that wonders why they have to mess with things if they arent broke

when I got my machine i priced other sources as far as barebones building, do it myself I just did not see where I would come out financially better. i was figuring the exact same components that was on the dell.

I disagree completely. I find it far easier to get around in Windows 7 than any other previous Windows flavor. Less clicks all around and the instant search bar in the Start Menu is my favorite. On top of that the "Recent Places" link in Windows Explorer is huge time saver, no need to click, click, click to get to a deep folder. Did you know that you can ADD any location you want to the "favorites" in Windows Explorer as well? I add my most frequented folders to the "favorites' and they are there every time I go to open a file. I think that most folks haven't even scratched the surface of discovering all the time (and click) savings in Windows 7.

As far as the stability of the OS itself, we have basically had ZERO stability issues in 7. The only issues we encounter are with device drivers and third party software (mostly legacy or older software) which are in no way the fault of the OS. If you are experiencing stability issues and crashes, I would have to agree that you should look at your particular system. Windows 7 runs very smooth and fast on our computers as does the major design software used in this industry (Adobe, Corel, Flexi, Omega,etc). Stability really hasn't been an issue for us with Windows 7 at all. This could very well be the quality of hardware and lack of bloatware in our systems.

 

[SightLine]

Yeah the picture view issue is not so much Windows 7. We have Windows 7 running on a dozen computers and none have ever had a problem with windows picture viewer. That crashing on yours is one of a few things. Either some program you installed and use somehow conflict with it, possibly video card driver, or a bad memory chip somewhere which could be on the video card, could be system ram, could even be a cache memory chip. On the memory thing it is very possible that the specific component only happends to get addresses (used) when picture viewer is running. Hard to tell really.

This exact scanario is another reason why it is often better to buy a machine pre-made from Casey or even a professional workstation from Dell or HP. These sort of issues are resolved before the machines are produced en-masse and/or during bench testing before shipping. Instead of trying to narrow it down yourself which I personally do not have time for.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

Finally made it to Atlanta to respond (freakin Bonneroo traffic). Like I said again, look at your particular system. I would be willing to bet that something you have on there is causing some issue(s).

As to financially better off, it all depends on how you shop and where.

 

[john1]

No probs with Win7 64 bit here

 

[WCSign]

No probs with Win7 64 bit here

+1

 

[WCSign]

Arrrrggghh! He did it to a 2nd computer?

Did they later find his body in the woods?

LOL he never found a job and isnt staying with me anymore!

 

[tcorn1965]

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2406874&Sku=B69-1407

Add an operating system and a Hi End dual video card...Set for years

 

[Techman]

I have heard nothing but bad things about Win8

Of course you do. Its sill in the testing phase. This is when all the mistakes show their head and all the good stuff is never praised.
Win 8 will be just fine.

 

[john1]

Friend has a beta copy of Win8. Looks pretty much the same but has some cool new features.