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So, need a PC for my mother...
Essentially she needs something that she can use to VPN and work from home, it will need to support dual monitors.
It will only be used for work, so no gaming, no video, imaging, etc. Just web based apps, etc.
That being said, I'm used to building my pc's and I know in the past when I've pieced together a low end PC, it was generally cheaper to just buy a premade like a dell, etc.
Price range is flexible, but I'm guessing something in the 300-400 range (sans the monitors) should do the trick?
Was curious if anyone had any experience in this area and what recommendations they might make.
She would like to have a laptop if possible, however, I was cautioning her on that since the keyboards can get tiresome to type on after 8 hours, etc.
Either way, taking all opinions.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
Comments
edit - if she wants it to be mobile and bring it everywhere laptop not too bad of an option either
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
For work, you need reliability. If a gaming rig breaks and you can't play games for a few days, oh well. If you can't work for a few days, big problem. Laptops are not reliable, but quality desktop hardware with a good power supply fed by a good UPS is, at least as hardware goes. I have no clue whether your mom would be the sort to get malware.
Some years ago, I helped my dad build a couple of cheap desktops for his business. Four years later, he decided to replace them with some cheap Dell desktops. I'm not sure how Dell managed to do this, but the four years newer desktops somehow managed to be noticeably slower than the old ones that had been cheap (maybe $400 or $500 or so) when new.
That said, the advantage of Dell or HP is that if something breaks, you can get tech support or a replacement quickly. That matters in a work environment much more so than a gaming rig.
Do get an SSD, though. That will make it fast.
Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
Yeah i'm thinking I may just build a SFF system for her so I can control what goes in it. Though I admit I'm kind of leaning towards that HP Pavilion someone linked with the AMD A8.
Quiz, I agree with you on the laptop/keyboard thing. The main reason she asked about that is *occasionally* she will get sent out of state and while she doesn't *need* to be able to access the VPN, it would be nice.
However if I go the laptop route im guessing ill need a docking station and a full keyboard and mouse, cus like you said, I don't hate my mother.
In all reality though I'm thinking a SFF tower of some sort would fit the bill nicely.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
There's a huge difference between traveling one day per year versus fifty days per year. "Occasionally" makes it sound like it's sure not the latter.
Desktop advantages aren't just about the keyboard, mouse, and monitors, or even picking your own parts. In a desktop, if something breaks, you can fix it. In many laptops, if a memory chip goes bad, the whole machine is dead and unusable. Laptops are more likely to have parts break, too, as you don't have the best cooling profile. Even low power laptops sometimes manage to overheat because their cooling is really pathetic. And few people drop desktops on the ground.
Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
She does not have a laptop at this time. So, just for more informations sake, she is a claims adjuster, and occasionally has to go out of state for abritrations and what not. These can last anywhere from 2-3 days to a week or so, and happens maybe 2-4 times a year.
50 days is unlikely, but 10-15 is more likely. Which is why I said occasionally.
I'm doing research right now on a mini ITX, I think its worth it for me to just build it myself as like you said, if something breaks I can fix it. Secondarily, no bloatware, etc. Unfortunately for me, I'm the tech support, so I don't need tech support from the manufacturer.
My main annoyance with that is having to pay $100 or so for the OS. Part of the advantage of buying a prebuilt from say Dell or HP is that they get bulk discounts on OS copies and as a result you can usually get a similar level of hardware for 10-20% less than you can build it yourself.
However, like you said I want it to have an SSD as I want it to be as responsive as possible for her.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
Stick with Western Digital.
Here is an example of an AM1 build:
Athlon 5350 $42.99
ASRock AM1H-ITX $48.99
Crucial BX200 480GB $118.28
Crucial Ballistix Tactical Low-Profile 2x4GB $42.99
MiniBox M350 case $39.99
GELID Solutions AM1 Slim-silent cooler $25.00
Superb Choice 65w AC Adapter $8.99 / MasterWatt 65 Universal AC Adapter $34.50
2.4G 2dbi Wifi IPEX to SMA adapter $2.67
Windows 10 Home Full Retail $129.99
Total: $459.89 / $485.40 Depending on AC Adapter
Obviously a lot can be saved from this build, this just fits a neat form factor. Replacing the mobo and case will net $100 savings(No need for special heatsink, full retail windows, or wifi, plus cost savings of case and mobo possiblity). Changing the SSD to an HDD would be an $80 savings. Combo deals could probably save an addition $40-$60.
The big issue would be that 1 of the 2 monitors will need to be run on analog.
After replacing thousands of drives in data centers, I can assure you there is no best brand of mechanical drive. All have their bad lots and bad models every once in a while. All have early failures happen.
Nothing worse than driving 50+ miles to swap a failed drive in a server for a company then realizing both new drives you're carrying (straight from the manufacturer) are bad as well.
These things happen.