PC Tech Thread

Although, when my laptop does die/I upgrade I could just reuse the SSD. Buying a better one now would make more sense perhaps?

Nearly got my spec together for a CAD machine, who do you guys buy your components from? I'm hoping to be able to buy everything from 1 or 2 places without a massive price penalty.

ebuyer?

Scan are usually pretty competitive. Always had really good service from them too.

I used Insight when I was tapping up my student discount. They weren't the best at prices, but they were one of the very few woh would apply student discount to absolutely anything, which made them really competitive.

Ace, will check them out. I've heard bad things about eBuyer's service so would be a bit worried about something not working. No student discount for a long time unfortunately :,(

I found ebuyers service to be completely the opposite. The PC which I build using a SB motherboard had to be recalled due to a chip error on the board I understand they had to deal with 1,000's of these but I expressed that I hadn't owned it long and needed it for work.

They spoke to ASUS on my behalf and sent out the new version of the Mobo before I'd even returned mine.

Great service from ebuyer for me.

Looking to get a cheap new monitor - not worried about particularly decent colour quality - i'm colour blind so would be lost on me....

Basically want something 22 inch and above, with HDMI input (I think) and cheap as possible, anyone got any recommendations?

Any desktop advice?

From having an incredibly quick look, this see,s to be pretty good value but I'm sure there is better out there...

http://meshcomputers.com/Default.aspx?PAGE=PRODUCTVIEWPAGE&USG=PRODUCT&ENT=PRODUCT&KEY=950548

Any desktop advice?

Well, it was the laptop thread.

What are your requirements and budget?

I really like workstations, not sure I know a lot about desktops though.

Can I delete the Recovery partition on my laptops SSD? My understanding is that it is there so people don't have to faf around booting from Memory-stick's / SD cards. But assuming I can do that, is there any real need to keep the backup partition?
(It uses 30GB of a 128GB SSD, which is the only drive, so is quite a limiter)

recovery is if you break your windows install. you can boot from recovery console and repair os or reinstall. get rid if you want you make sure you have media to reinstall os if things head south. 30GB does seem excessive for a recovery partition. why dont you resize it using partition magic reclaiming the white space but leaving the recovery partition intact

Can I delete the Recovery partition on my laptops SSD? My understanding is that it is there so people don't have to faf around booting from Memory-stick's / SD cards. But assuming I can do that, is there any real need to keep the backup partition?
(It uses 30GB of a 128GB SSD, which is the only drive, so is quite a limiter)

If you don't run Windows... sure, blow it away.

If you run Windows, keep it. You'll regret deleting it one day.

128GB? Right... do you have an SD card slot? If so, go buy a 128GB SD card and leave it in there permanently. Put all your docs on that.

Wow I didn't even realise they made sd cards that size!

^^ I know, I'm confusing the thread here.

My requirements are...

I only use it for general office type stuff with a little sound/photo editing added in. So no great fancy needs.

Windows 7?
2-4gb of ram?
500gb hard drive?
£500?

I'm running on considerably less ATM but it'd be nice to have more space.

Thanks all. I will check out that Mesh link.

I'm not up on desktops. Workstations and laptops I know, but desktops I would always just build myself.

There are some deals though, this HP (whilst horribly glossy) is a bargain from any viewpoint: http://h20386.www2.hp.com/UKStore/Merch/Product.aspx?id=B7J06EA&opt=ABU&sel=PCDT&lay=uk#

Do ssd have a cycle life? Thought sd cards had a number of read write cycles.

http://www.storagesearch.com/ssdmyths-endurance.html

Do ssd have a cycle life? Thought sd cards had a number of read write cycles.

Are you confusing SSDs and SD cards because you don't know the difference or because you seek to create confusion over the issue?

Might drop one of the new Samsung 840 SSDs in my laptop soon. It currently just has 128gb Toshiba sad and I'd really like to keep my music on the laptop rather than on an external drive...

http://www.storagesearch.com/ssdmyths-endurance.html

Interesting read, thanks.

I'm just about to buy this SSD to add to a fairly old E4400 and 4GB DDR2 setup, mainly used for browsing and watching media (stored on a seperate traditional drive). Seems like a good deal; £53 for 120GB.

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/120gb-ocz-solid-3-ssd-25-sata-6gb-s-sandforce-2281-read-550mb-s-write-530mb-s-34k-iops

If you don't run Windows... sure, blow it away.

If you run Windows, keep it. You'll regret deleting it one day.

128GB? Right... do you have an SD card slot? If so, go buy a 128GB SD card and leave it in there permanently. Put all your docs on that.

Do ssd have a cycle life? Thought sd cards had a number of read write cycles.

Are you confusing SSDs and SD cards because you don't know the difference or because you seek to create confusion over the issue?

You mention adding an sd card -

SSD - solid state drive I get but the technology SD cards have a number of use cycles do the ssd have a similar issues from your experience of use on something with a lot of data transfer.

If any consumer ever reaches the limits of either medium in terms of read/writes I will be truly shocked.

I've never managed it. I've never reached the end life of a hard drive either.

Because storage keeps expanding, as do my needs, and long before any theoretical limit is reached I've upgraded.

The main factor in durability comes down the the controller in the drive itself, which are more optimised for constant use in an ssd whereas an SD card has a very different usage pattern, usually.
SSDs also tend to use different types of flash storage, SLC and MLC depending on who's making them and for what price.

The gist is that SSDs employ a lot of circuitry to manage their wear so its as close to their theoretical maximum read/write cycle.