New computer from Old

[chris ashdown]

Just taken on a girl to do the dispatch and have a 4 year old computer with flat screen etc that we can use for her as a short term solution.

Looking to fit a more modern motherboard and chip plus memory

No requirements apart from runnng actinic v8 MU for priniting invoices. no sound or games graphics etc required, no big hard drive just ethernet connection to the main computer

any suggestions keeping it a cheap as possible, bearing in mind a new basic computer is only in the low £300 's

[leehack]

By the time you've bought all that Chris, you may as well buy a new one IMO. It could conflict, you could balls it up fitting them and you'd then be forced to go get a new one anyway. When you buy a complete system it is so much cheaper than the individual components, i recently read that a new car costing £16,000 would actually cost you £39,000 if you bought each part separately.

If you really didn't want to spend £300, a second hand one at a computer fayre or off ebay would be a better proposition, they go for so cheap nowadays, in fact i firmly believe that a computer is nowadays a disposable piece of equipment. You can get a new desktop with windows xp for £200.

[pinbrook]

Agree with Lee, by the time you've made sure the new motherboard is compatible with everything else you may as well have shelled out the £300 for a new box.

In my view its a false economy

[george]

Misco, £200 + vat.

[chris ashdown]

Thanks folk, I understand where you are comming from but I think most of you apart from George are not thinking cash is king and cashflow is even better

The undate done for say £150 giving a new motherboard and chip is more than enough, if fitted by the local computer shop has no compatability problems or damage problems and gives a computer equal to last years model for the purpose required i.e. very basic

as always a new £7000 car will do the same function as a new £20000 car it may even in some cases be more reliable it's horses for courses, and we are just looking at a short time solution and quite honestly my high spec dual chip laptop does not do anymore than the other computers we have except run maybe a bit faster on the graphics programs, but then the other computers are not used for this anyway

[leehack]

The undate done for say £150 giving a new motherboard and chip is more than enough, if fitted by the local computer shop has no compatability problems or damage problems and gives a computer equal to last years model for the purpose required i.e. very basic

That's fine if all of your IFS are proved correct. But for £50 more you can get a brand new one with a years guarantee. I've seen too many upgrades and changes to systems that fail miserably or end up with an unstable buggy system to contemplate it to save £50.

[chris ashdown]

Lee where do I get a new one for £200 that is a great price and no contest!

[leehack]

4 threads up Chris, Georges post. Been some very good feedback on these guys on the forum lately, theres a few posts about it. misco.co.uk.

This one even comes with xp pro for under 200 scadoonas.

[wjcampbe]

Can add my recommendation on this company, too. I use them for software, and service is quick and efficient unlike an appliance company I can't name yet (3 months and waiting) from Jonty country.

[jont]

Oh aye - tarnish my reputation by association

[AndrewPK]

aye, I have to agree with the rest of the posters on this thread, a new PC is the best way to go!

For not much more money, you can have a brand new PC with a 3 year warranty.

Going for the 'Upgrade' path will more than likely cost you a lot more, Computer hardware has pushed forward quite a bit in the last 4 years (you said the PC was about 4 years old) so while yes you can put a new chip in there, chances are the New CPU will be a different socket type meaning a new mother board, new CPUs run a lot faster as well meaning everything else runs faster, so i doubt the ram that's in the old PC will be up to scratch so you need to upgrade that! and depending if you go for on-board graphics or not, you will probably have to go for a new graphics card as most new mobos are PCI-E based (the current board will probably be either On-board or AGP. So thats another.

Add to that, any of the parts that you DO salvage and get working after an upgrade will be 4 years old! how confident are you of sticking a 4 year old hard drive in a new build pc and running your business from it?

Now that not to say I'm against upgrading PC's I do it with mine all the time, but it really should be a 'rolling upgrade'. I generally upgrade a part about once every six months, meaning that what ever is in my pc is a max of about 2 years old.

All in all, for what you say you need it for, i would go for the 200 quid misco thingy mentioned above, its gonna run you into about the same price as the upgrade, and you get the piece of mind knowing that everything is going to work together and is covered if it doesn't

AndrewPK

[Stereo Steve]

Isn't Misco the company that used to be called 'Simply', one of the first IT ecommerce sites way back?

Back on topic, a new machine is the way to go. We got an esys machine fro dispatch from ebuyer for about £130 although no OS (we have spare licences). Stuck a bit of extra ram in it and it's great.

[jont]

Yep - new machine - worth the extra money for the peace of mind and happiness. I have had my works PC for 5 years and upgraded bits at a time.. have just replaced it this week for brand new and I know the extra time save waiting and re-booting will earn me back the money very quickly. We also replaced the server rather than upgrading and everyone is working more productively.. definitely worth the additional investment (you don't have to spend huge amounts to make a big difference nowadays)