O.T. Talk me into a new computer

[Bobby1Note]

I think the time has come to retire my not-so-trusty-anymore PC desktop computer. I designed and built this thing from scratch, probably around 2004. I'm running a 1.1gHz Athlon processor, on a PCI/AGP slot ATX motherboard, probably maxed out DDR2 ram to 1 gig. Neither of my CD or DVD drives are running anymore, and haven't for quite some time. In ten years, I've changed one power-supply, and one hard-drive. My hard-drive is 80GBs/7200rpm, and very quiet. Most of the time, it's fine, except I've been having longer wait times opening a web pages, and YouTube music videos are terribly out-of-synch, with lots of frame drop-outs.

Now, I haven't read a thing about computers for YEARS!!! I realize that multi-core processors have been out there  for quite some time now, and undoubtedly, buss-speeds have increased dramatically. If you were shopping for a new computer these days, what would you be looking at? I'm pretty leery about going with big-name-brands like HP, mostly because I like the idea of a motherboard with expansion slots, and the ability to swap out video and sound cards. Many of the big-names don't offer that expandability, since their video and sound chips are fixed on the motherboard.

Tonight I took a peek at some of the iMac's, w/ i5 and i7 processors, 1TB drives, 8GB's of DDR5 RAM, and the beautiful iMac 27" displays. VERY nice.

What's happening in the world of PC's? Where's the current sweet-spot,,,, that balance between performance and price. I don't need cutting-edge,  but I also don't want yesterdays' newspaper. I'd like something that might have been considered top-shelf a year ago. Also, if there's something dramatically new, looming just over the horizon,  I'd like to know.

 

Thanks,

[WynnD]

Considering the age of your current machine, anything is going to feel very fast and actually is way faster. Now I'm a former PC/Network tech and CNA who has moved to Macs. Yes they cost more, but you will get more than you're expecting. I was expecting a functional laptop with working firewire, a necessity for recording in my life. What I got that wasn't expected is 7+ hours running time on a full charge. My MacBook Pro is almost 4 years old and I still get about 7 hours on a full charge. I also didn't expect fully back lit keyboard. Very useful in the dark. I also wasn't expecting to be able to run Windows, but I got that too. (Needed to buy the OS, but the hardware fully supports it.) Now for $500 you can get a PC laptop that will run rings around what you used to own and probably have a 2 hour battery life between charges. (Just go into any coffee bar and look and see who's plugged in. Macs are rarely plugged in there and PC Laptops are mostly plugged in.) In today's world, laptops might not be expandable, but they have just about the same power as a desktop with a lot more functionality. You can still get desktops that allow expansion. If you have a particular piece of equipment in mind, better check what style and OS is compatible with it.

[Bobby1Note]

Thanks Wynn,

I've got a 22" iMac (Snow Leopard) which I bought 6 years ago (seems like yesterday). I hardly ever use that computer, since that one's set-up downstairs, in the music-room. I initially bought it for recording, and that hasn't materialized. A fire-wire 800 port greatly influenced that purchase, but I now see that the new ThunderBolt ports run 12x faster (10gb/s)

The computer I'm looking at replacing, is a desktop PC located upstairs, in what we call "the computer room"(Duh!!!). I like one in each location because it's simply handier, and, it's quieter upstairs.

Laptops really aren't my thing. My girlfriend has one, but I'm just not into mobile computing. Basically, I'm just surfing the net, and listening to a lot of YouTube music videos. I like having external speakers w/ subwoofer, and I'd miss that with the laptop.

Basically, I'm happy with my old display, and was thinking of adding just a new tower, but maybe it's time to ditch that one too.

What I was thinking of doing, is selecting a quality mother-board,,, maybe by Asus or GigaByte,,,, choosing which cpu I want,,, adding my own video and sound-cards,,, a high-capacity power-supply and fast HDD. The last one I built, had 5 PCI slots, and an AGP port for video cards. Maximum RAM for that set-up was only 1 gB of DDR2. USB 1.0 was the only game in town back then. PCI Express hadn't come along yet. Back then, it was plenty fast, even for gaming, but I've picked up so much garbage over the years, that it's now just crawling along.

[Axisplayer]

Bobby, sounds like you already talked yourself into a new one. I have been a faithful Mac owner since 1988 when I started at NASA doing systems admin. I will never own another PC if I can help it. My house has an iMac, MiniMac, one Macbook Pro laptop, two MacBook Air laptops, and a couple of older iMacs in the garage that get pressed into audio work sometimes. I have one lonely HP laptop that has served me well (a lighting program and a wireless management program required a PC to run while my Mac ran my 01v96's.) The PC never gets used anymore, but we keep wearing out or out growing the Macs. New OS's mean new hardware at some point, and it sounds like you are there...

[StratGuy22]

I just picked up a Mac book pro to replace my Mac mini. It was a pain dragging around the ATA case, setting up the monitor etc. the mini served me well, helping me multitrack and remote mix with my StudioLives, but it was time to streamline. Mine is a bit older, from 2012, but I wanted a DVD drive. I get music on CD monthly from one if the music pools I belong to for DJ'ing. It was a pain putting it in my desktop, then onto a USB drive and then finally only the portable drive. Now I just pop in the CD and hop it to the portable drive.

I might end up moving the mini into my basement as a desktop for editing video etc.

[Bobby1Note]

When I bought my iMac, probably in late 2007-early 2008, I wanted to keep that computer off-line. I wanted to use it strictly for multi-track recording to an external HDD. For many reasons, the recording thing just never materialized. I'd occasionally watch a DVD movie, and that was about it. Recently, I started doing a bit of web-surfing on it, but having never used a Mac before, some of the very simple things frustrated me. The mouse was a complete turn-off when it came to scrolling. I'm probably doing something wrong there, but the tiny scroll-button seems sooooo slowwwww compared to a Microsoft mouse scrolling wheel. None of my buddies run Macs, so there's no basic "tips" to be had.

I suppose I should just knuckle down and spend some time on it. The display certainly is to-die-for.

As far as the PC is concerned, I tried defragging the hard-drive yesterday, but that hasn't been much help. After the de-frag, I got an analysis that said "some files could not be defragged".My HDD is 82% full, and that REALLY surprised me. It's a fairly recent 80GB drive.

What's odd though, is that my iMac also seems to be taking a long time to open a link. I called my ISP, and they ran a test, and they're telling me that my download speed is 10.26mb/s. I just ran the test again, and it's 10.68mb/s. I was thinking that this speed-rate is for the line,,,, and that this same line is being used by others, causing a slow-down. Mind you, it doesn't seem to vary much with the time of day. Even at 03:00-04:00 AM, when most local folk are sleeping, it's equally slow.

A couple of nights ago, I shutdown my computer for the night, and I got a message that said "Are you SURE you want to shut down now? OTHERS are currently using your computer, and may lose data.