The Official Computer Tech Support Thread

[poppie]

Well just filed my tax returns will be getting over 2 grand! back
and i will be shopping around for a new PC finilly.
my priority will be high memory hard drive space and sound systems!.

[s_k]

Why do you want a lot of memory?
And what do you want to use the sound card for?

[Freebase Dali]

4 gigs minimum, Windows 7 32bit (if you want the 64 bit, you'll be able to have more RAM than 4 gigs, but I doubt your needs will require it), at least a dual-core processor, and a standard 24-bit sound card. Go with that if you're not using your computer for any specialized task, aka just browsing, listening to music, etc.
Why? Because that's pretty much what you'll be offered, and it's the current standard for your average consumer PC. That means you won't have to spend your whole tax return to get it, and it will also meet your needs.

Of course, I'm assuming you're not planning on doing graphics rendering or heavy-duty audio work. You should be fine for gaming, although for gaming, you'll probably want to have at least 512mb of RAM in your graphics card, preferably Nvidia or ATI. A lot of current games only support those cards anyway.

[s_k]

24 bit cards usually aren't standard. Most cards just do 44khz 16 bits.
When you plan on listening to mp3's through your computer speakers it's never worth investing in an expensive soundcard. You won't hear the difference.
More than 4 gigs of RAM is probably a waste of money unless you plan to do a lot of photo/video editing. I am running win7 with 2 gigs of ram on my office PC now and that's just fine. I will upgrade to 4 sometime, but more won't be neccesary.
I do a lot of photo (photoshop/lightroom) and video (premiere pro cs3) editing on my audio/video PC and even then I don't often run out of ram. That PC only has 4 gigs.

As for harddrive space: 1,5TB disks are pretty cheap now. I suggest you have one of those. But please buy a second one (maybe external) to backup your ****. Raid could be an option too, if your motherbord supports it (when you put two identical drives in RAID mode, you only see one drive, but all your files are on both drives. Whenever one drive crashes, all your files will be on the other one ).

Other than that: Avoid total budget stuff with SiS chipsets and so on.
Every 'better' brand will be just fine.
You should probably be able to stay under $500, screen included, should you want to.

But I don't know what you want to do with your PC. Don't spend a lot of money if you're just surfing, watching video's and listening to music. A PC for less than 350 dollars can do that just fine.
My PC's have specs from 2007 (not all PC's are that old, I often buy old hardware new because it's dead cheap then). They run brilliantly.
Most of the time, when your PC is less than 6 years old and crappy, it's the user that fails, not the computer .

Ah, should you want to buy a serious sound card because you want to record audio to your PC or hook it up to a quality stereo set; I really like my ESI Juli@. Sounds better than most CD players .

[Freebase Dali]

You're probably going over her head with a lot of that stuff.
Including information she'll find on a rack sticker will be sufficient.

I doubt she's going to be implementing any RAID solutions, nor will she know about chipsets, nor will it matter to her if she just wants a computer to use casually.



P.S... 16 bit sound cards are still standard? That's insane. I haven't seen a 16-bit onboard Real-Tek in quite some time. Maybe it's just me and where I shop for things.

[poppie]

Memory for heavy duty gaming, sound for high-definition music
playing. i have been shopping around and saw some 8 gig memory
pc's for under $800 bucks!.

Originally Posted by s_k

Why do you want a lot of memory?
And what do you want to use the sound card for?

[s_k]

You need a quick processor and a nice video card for heavy duty gaming.
You're not going to need a good soundcard and probably not even 8 gigs of ram for heavy duty gaming. But the latter may be a safe bet. Anyway, when you're planning to use your PC speakers or a headset with microphone for gaming, you won't need an expensive sound card, trust me.

[Dayvan Cowboy]

so, me and my friend are going to have a bit of fun with a useless old PC we found in her basement. So, we were going to write a malicious .bat file. I've done this before but it was a rather quick delete system32 thing so it wasn't very entertaining.

how do you make a batch file timed? I want some time before it sets in.

[Freebase Dali]

Originally Posted by Dayvan Cowboy

so, me and my friend are going to have a bit of fun with a useless old PC we found in her basement. So, we were going to write a malicious .bat file. I've done this before but it was a rather quick delete system32 thing so it wasn't very entertaining.

how do you make a batch file timed? I want some time before it sets in.

I haven't done any scripting for a batch file in ages, but I don't remember there being a wait command that ever worked for me.
The way most people end up doing it is to simply to ping your network card using a -n switch with the indicated number of seconds.

So if you want to wait for a period of time immediately after the bat executes, the first line of code you'd put in would be, using 60 seconds as an example:

ping 127.0.0.1 -n 60

Then you'd write your other lines of code afterward.
The only thing is it's going to sit there and ping & reply in the output window, which isn't an issue in itself and doesn't affect anything, but if you're trying to be sneaky, you may want to figure out how to make it so that the bat runs in the background or something, which I'm not sure how to do. You can probably find a tutorial on the web somewhere.

[Dayvan Cowboy]

Originally Posted by Freebase Dali

I haven't done any scripting for a batch file in ages, but I don't remember there being a wait command that ever worked for me.
The way most people end up doing it is to simply to ping your network card using a -n switch with the indicated number of seconds.

So if you want to wait for a period of time immediately after the bat executes, the first line of code you'd put in would be, using 60 seconds as an example:

ping 127.0.0.1 -n 60

Then you'd write your other lines of code afterward.
The only thing is it's going to sit there and ping & reply in the output window, which isn't an issue in itself and doesn't affect anything, but if you're trying to be sneaky, you may want to figure out how to make it so that the bat runs in the background or something, which I'm not sure how to do. You can probably find a tutorial on the web somewhere.

thank you! now I'm able to sit there triumphantly and be proud of myself while I wait for the system files to be deleted.