PC Tech Thread

Just ordered a Samsung 830 128gb to put in a USB3 enclosure even though my computers are USB2. Fail.
FireWire 800 cases are just too expensive and thunderbolt is still vapourware.

Urgggg my Force 3 SSD keeps freezing and it is driving me mad

My PC stopped reaching the BIOS. There's almost nothing in it which was there when it was build 5 years ago. Decided to buy a cheap replacement.

Got a Dell Poweredge 1950 with 2 dual core 2.2GHz Xeons in it, for £70 delivered.

Should be easier to find a space for than the Antec P180 case currently hogging my desk space.

5 years makes me think it's the cmos battery. try replacing it and see if it works, could be a ~£3 fix

If it was a flat CMOS battery I'd expect it to show the BIOS screen and offer to reset to defaults, I get nothing on the screen.

Already paid for the Dell, I don't have the drive to mess about with hardware any more, I must be getting old...

don't blame you, I threw out 3 old pcs when I moved that were all quite salvagable for basic web use but had trouble booting.

Can anyone recommend a cheap, light laptop?
The most resource heavy thing will be photo / video editing programs.
Cheap as possible.

Seen an Asus jobbie for £350, 1tb HDD, 6gb RAM and a Celeron 1.8gz processor.
Not particularly light though, and underpowered on the CPU (imo).

Got less than £500 to spunk on it.
Thanks interneteers!

Video editing is a hefty requirement. Will you actually be editing stuff on the go?

I say video editing, in reality it will be from gopro to YouTube. Just a bit of chopping and adding a soundtrack.

Alas I have no space for a real computer at home.

If you've got a flat telly you can use that as your monitor, then a wireless keyboard/trackpad for use from the sofa...

In the past I've had a netbook for on-the-go with a powerful PC at home. If I needed some extra processing I'd use SSH to connect to my home PC or my Uni servers from whichever hotspot I was leeching from.

Very cheap 240gb SSD on ebuyer this weekend: http://www.ebuyer.com/339606-ocz-240gb-vertex-plus-ssd-oczssd2-1vtxpl240g

Only Sata 2?

Cheap for a reason...

But that's still one of the fastest drives around.

Right, what laptop is equal in size, weight and performance to a Mac Book Air, but isn't one?

i.e. a Dellenovompaq of some description.

Motivation here is a laptop of sufficient svelteness to go in a small bag at the end of every working day, unlike my current 3kg Dell-from-hell.

Lock it up at work?

CYOA had a link to a really good laptop building site - just plug in the specs and it spits out a laptop with price.

I've no idea where either the link, or CYOA, are.

Spencey- that's what I do, however it would be handy to have it with me, which is why I wish to ensmallen it.

Tiswas- CYOA is in indochina, communing with his Thunderbox due to injudicious sampling of the local cuisine.

What do you use it for?

i thought tw wasn't on here anymore...

What do you use it for?

Verk, it would be a company machine.

Samsung Series 9 and Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon are the nearest competitors to MBA I guess.

Ok, the Samsung looks the more appealing of the two in terms of price.

Then there is this re-conned MBA for £849 http://store.apple.com/uk/product/FD231B/A/refurbished-macbook-air-18ghz-dual-core-intel-core-i5

Which I could dual boot with W7 if my IT dept insists on it.

Why buy a macbook to then run W7? I'd go with the samsung.

For the same money, I'd get a decent workstation for my work desk, a netbook and a 3G dongle. RemoteDesktop/VNC/X-forwarding when on wifi, SSH when on 3G.