New computer or not

[Tim Morton]

Pardon my small PC/ Best Buy rant here...please read and ignore so as not to hijack the thread.

My daughters husband bought a gateway laptop one year and 2 weks ago from Best Buy. See where this is headed...it died last night 2 weeks out of warantee. Neither BB or Gateway will even entertain the idea of comprimsing on this. BB wants to charge her $500 to take this one in and give them a refurbed unit in return. And Gateway won't even speak to her unless she pays $100 to set up a repair call.

The kicker is the computer started acting up last month ( under warantee) and the fellow from india/gateway told her he would email her the RMA instructions to send it in for repair. He never did and now the computer is dead and this young couple is out $1000.

The cause of the computer death, a metal bracket that was welded to something internal came off and dropped onto the MB and fried it....

Before you say it....yes i suppose that might happen with Apple...but i have never heard of it....and if you go online to research consumer complaints against Gateway and/or BB...it seems to happen every couple of hours.

[Darius Ferlas]

ditto what scot AND john said...this is the entire reason why i believe anyone who buys a PC for home use is making a huge mistake.

Mac vs. Windows is in the same league as politics and religion. You either believe, or vote or you don't.

Not really a mistake but a logical choice. Apple is not known for addressing the needs of an enterprise. People go to work where mostly Win. is used. They decide they need a computer and the logical choice is windows too. The whole issue of learning and re-learning etc. I started with a Mac years ago. I worked on it 4 years and I hated every minute of it. Completely illogical, confusing and unreliable. I dumped it and never looked back. I use Windows because I have to, and Linux because I like it.

The mistake I see is that many people do not care to be educated. We all took driving lessons in one form or another but we hesitate to take a few hours of computer classes. And I'm not talking about computer repair or software development. Computers are the most sophisticated toys human kind came up with so far, and yet we expect to be able to just use them without experiencing any problems.

There is a not a single thing a PC can do at home that a mac can't not only do, but do better and easier...

Unfortunately, that is also true of Mac viruses and other malware. The ease with which it can be caught is astounding.

Ease of use of software use is debatable. MS Word under Mac is as easy as it is under Windows.

That being said...i am quite comfortable flying under the radar with just 10% of the market share

And that's the big mistake. Macs are as vulnerable as PCs. Actually, security advisories for Mac in the last couple of years were more numerous than for Windows.

There are no 100% safe and "best" operating systems or computers. As I mentioned before, computer security is not a product but a process.

If you want safer than Windows and Mac, and if you want to pay only for hardware get Linux. Not 100% secure. None of them are, but in the last 12 years that my daughter (not even close to a computer geek) has been using it she had zero issues, not a single virus. Pretty unusual for a teenager online.

As for the Gateway laptop described above - well, Gateway is the Yugo of computers. Stay away.

[Tim Morton]

I worked on it 4 years and I hated every minute of it. Completely illogical, confusing and unreliable..

Good info to know regarding your future posts......darius is the guy who couldn't figure out the macOS even after 4 years....

j/k

[Scott Shepherd]

I worked on it 4 years and I hated every minute of it. Completely illogical, confusing and unreliable. I dumped it and never looked back. I use Windows because I have to, and Linux because I like it.

There lies another issue with the comparisons. Many of the Pro-PC arguments always start by saying "I used a Mac 4 years ago". Well, that's always a good comparison, let's compare your experience on a 4 year old system to a brand new windows machine and then we'll pick apart the lack of features on the 4 year old system. Want to compare systems, compare OSX and Vista.

[Randal Stevenson]

I stood over my co-worker's shoulder a few weeks ago when he was searching for some material online. After closing Firefox (another example of someone who's not a Geek wouldn't know anything about), a window popped up and told him he had a virus and asked him if he wanted to remove it. His mouse was hovering over the "Remove virus" button when I screamed "DON'T CLICK THAT".

How the heck was he supposed to know? That's the problem with your anti-Mac arguments. You assume the users know, or even want to know computers at the same level you do. How many people out there that are users actually want to spend their free time finding out about Thunderbird, Firefox, AVG Free, etc.

THEY DON'T CARE.

They want to turn it on, surf the internet, email someone and maybe type a document every now and then. There is no reason they need to know how to download and install all sorts of things that most geeks love to do.

Who set up the pc? For the typical user, you can set it up weather Linux, Mac, PC to be pretty secure. For instance, to use some Windows program they are comfortable with, as well as the typical surfing/emailing, etc, I could set up someones pc, to disallow pop ups, eliminate active X, install their program, and use something like Vlite or Nlite to simplifiy Windows.
Linux CAN be bought, ALREADY on a pc, unfortunately, it is either a bit harder to find, or people don't realize they are using it (some of the Asus EEEpc users). Another option, that I showed a computer illiterate person, is/was a bootable distro. They can surf, email, etc. without fear of viruses, or being tracked by someone looking at the history/internet temp files.

No OS, is the end all be all, and companies don't care to try to make Windows secure as they want to load on a bunch of trial programs, and make you think you need them.

[Darius Ferlas]

There lies another issue with the comparisons. Many of the Pro-PC arguments always start by saying "I used a Mac 4 years ago".

Scott, I never said "I used a Mac 4 years ago". I said I worked on it 4 years and that was 15 years ago. I switched to PC when PCs really had a lot of catching up to do to be like Macs. Now they have, and it turns out Mac (hardwarewise) recently "caught" up with PC when Apple decided to switch to Intel platform. That was certainly a mistake, as their previous RISC architecture was technically much better, even if they lost points on raw speed tests on a Hertz by Hertz basis.

Until I can give my users Mac versions programs that they need to do their work Mac is not an option, other than to buy it just for kicks and install Linux on it.

Well, that's always a good comparison, let's compare your experience on a 4 year old system to a brand new windows machine and then we'll pick apart the lack of features on the 4 year old system. Want to compare systems, compare OSX and Vista.

15 years ago I didn't switch to PCs running Vista. There was no Vista then.

Why would you like to compare Mac OS to Vista then? Anyway, it is one of MS's worst, on par with Windows Millenium and Apple OS 10.5.2. On the second though, yeah, why not? Let's compare Mac OS 10.5.2. to Vista.

[Lori Kleinberg]

Thanks everyone for all the information and tips. I will definitely check into all the suggested fixes as well as new PC's and I will even take a quick peek at the Mac's.
I think I will sign off from this thread because it is turning a little heated.
Thanks again.

[Scott Shepherd]

Who set up the pc? For the typical user, you can set it up weather Linux, Mac, PC to be pretty secure. For instance, to use some Windows program they are comfortable with, as well as the typical surfing/emailing, etc, I could set up someones pc, to disallow pop ups, eliminate active X, install their program, and use something like Vlite or Nlite to simplifiy Windows.

Thanks for proving my point. 95% or more of the public doesn't know a word about what you just said, and don't want to know.

Darius, I never said that Mac's should replace all PC's in the world. I just think that off the cuff comments get taken as fact too many times. For instance, people say that corporations don't use Mac's. Sure they do. Ever heard of a little company called Apple? They have a massive company. MASSIVE, and they run on Mac's. So it's not like there aren't companies doing it. There are many many large companies running Mac's. There are also many companies switching over to Mac's but no one ever says that either. PC's have a role and not everything is available for the Mac platform. However, the vast majority of people are not superusers of computers, they just need email, internet and a word processor.

[Chuck Wintle]

My daughters husband bought a gateway laptop one year and 2 weeks ago from Best Buy. See where this is headed...it died last night 2 weeks out of warantee. Neither BB or Gateway will even entertain the idea of compromising on this. BB wants to charge her $500 to take this one in and give them a refurbed unit in return. And Gateway won't even speak to her unless she pays $100 to set up a repair call.

Had that happen to my son's laptop. In my opinion these laptops are made to last just about as long as the warrantee at which point the manufacturer hopes the consumer will toss it and buy another. Toshiba is just as bad as Gateway.

[Greg Narozniak]

Someone asked about the computer stats; Is this what you meant:
Intel Pentium 4 CPU 2.53GHz
504MB Ram
Hard drive C: 69.2 GB

Bump the RAM up to 2gb (Assuming the MB can handle it) Check with www.crucial.com and look up your PC. They guarantee compatability.

Add a second HD (you can do 1TB for $99) and you will be good for at least another year.

[Burt Alcantara]

Late to the party but I want to throw in another good word for Linux. I switched 2 years ago, my wife, last year. She works at home and exchanges files from Mac & Windows with no problem, using OpenOffice.

No viruses, no crashes, free software, free updates. Learning curve? Yes, but no worse then the other guys. Plus, you have the choice of running an entire OS from a CD or DVD (Knoppix); talk about security!

Is it a hacker OS? Disney uses Linux to render all of their frame drawings for their animated movies. Most brokerage houses use Linux for the backend processing, that is, all of the trades. Steve Balmer is more concerned about Linux then Apple.

There are numerous flavors of Linux, virtually, all free so you can get one customized for whatever pleases you. In fact, you can build one from the ground up with "Linux from Scratch (LFS)."

The best OS support forum on the planet is http://www.ubuntuforums.org. Log in and just browse. It's huge with an enormous user base that will answer any question from users all over the world.

Just be aware that there are other choices.
Burt

[Curt Harms]

.......
At the hacking contests held last year, a stock version of the Mac OS was the first to fall, then Windows. Linux never did get hacked. But even with that, the typical user just getting a computer is probably going to be happier with a Mac, then a PC and last of all a linux variant (which is always a challenge to get things like wireless adapters, printers, cameras, etc. to work with).

I've been a PC user since DOS 3.XX thru the various Windows iterations. I've played with Linux occasionally but Ubuntu 8.10 is pretty user friendly. It can install as dual boot with Windows or within Windows. Even using it as a "live CD" it found my wireless network automatically. Installed on a hard drive, I told it to find my networked printer. It found the printer and installed the software for it. I'm thinking use Linux for web surfing and ordinary office functions and Windows for applications for which there are no good Linux alternatives. I even installed Linux on an 8 gb. flash drive. That didn't work out reliably but I'm not sure if it was a software or hardware problem. For data sharing both Windows and Linux see USB drives of various flavors so keep data on USB drives. Linux is maturing and is certainly slick for the price ($0.00)

Curt

[Neal Clayton]

Help me decide please; My current desktop is about 5 years old. Have done nothing to upgrade it. Seems as though some of my ram has corrupted (not as much as I started with) down to about 504 mb, not that there is enough for all of todays program, anyway. Computer is running so slow I am about to throw it out the window(house). By the way it recently crashed . I do not know why, but luckily I had most of our stuff backed up and didn't lose any pictures. I have just recently finished rebuilding all my files and stuff.
I have enough computer (tech) knowledge to be dangerous, and my husband is less tech savy then I am .
So the question is do I try to upgrade/fix what I have or buy something new. If I buy new should I get another desktop or go with a laptop. The computer is used for internet surfing like SMC, shopping, research, etc. We write letters, very light editing and storage of pictures, and we use Quicken. Also, we are a PC

why not build one?

seriously. anyone who can read the motherboard manual can build a computer. it's a helluva lot easier than building anything with wood (the parts fit already, you don't have to make em fit ).

there are plenty of good motherboards out there with integrated video and audio, which is plenty for your listed needs. so all you gotta do is put the processor in, put the memory in, put it all in the case, plug in your drives and power supply, and the windows install CD does the rest.

this, this, this, this, this, and this, cost what, 400 bucks? copy of XP oem is another 100 or so.

could even eliminate the drives and just move over your old hard drive/cd drive(s) and knock it down another hundred bucks.

[Frank Hagan]

I've been a PC user since DOS 3.XX thru the various Windows iterations. I've played with Linux occasionally but Ubuntu 8.10 is pretty user friendly. It can install as dual boot with Windows or within Windows. Even using it as a "live CD" it found my wireless network automatically. Installed on a hard drive, I told it to find my networked printer. It found the printer and installed the software for it. I'm thinking use Linux for web surfing and ordinary office functions and Windows for applications for which there are no good Linux alternatives. I even installed Linux on an 8 gb. flash drive. That didn't work out reliably but I'm not sure if it was a software or hardware problem. For data sharing both Windows and Linux see USB drives of various flavors so keep data on USB drives. Linux is maturing and is certainly slick for the price ($0.00)

Yep, I like it too. I will only host websites on linux servers (I HATE MS servers), and I have a linux box I'm hoping to convert to a HTPC with either Mythbuntu or Boxee. But, like you, I have been using PCs since DOS 2.0, and helped my buddies with CPM machines before that. I remember making serial cables because there weren't standard pin-outs for the CPM stuff. I've built several computers (always costs more than buying them from the big guys though).

But I would never recommend Linux to a new computer user, or for someone who doesn't like to tinker under the hood. All you have to do is search the Ubuntu forums for "printer problems", "camera problems", etc. to see that there's a world of stuff made for Windows and Macs, and very little specifically for Linux.

My dislike of things Mac has much in common with what I dislike about Windows ... the lack of being able to look under the hood. But for ease of use for a new user, I think Mac has it hand's down. Then a Windows variant, and way down the list for newbies, Linux.

If any of my family members who don't have computers ask me, I'll tell them to buy a Mac. Then, when they call with a problem, I'll have them call my little sister who owns a Mac because "gee, I don't know anything about them." I have spent quite a few family holidays working on a relative's computer because its "easy for me". I even missed pumpkin pie one Thanksgiving!

[Tim Morton]

My dislike of things Mac has much in common with what I dislike about Windows ... the lack of being able to look under the hood.

http://www.spy-hill.com/~myers/help/...nableRoot.html

giddy up!!!