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Dear lord, I bought a PC

thechidz

thechidz

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Jul 25, 2007
1,886
1
New York City
well, I picked up this deal on buy.com today.

Gateway® GM5643E Digital TV Desktop / Intel® Core™ 2 Quad / 3072 MB DDR2 / 400 GB Hard Drive / Analog/Digital TV Tuner / 15-in-1 Media Reader / Elite wireless keyboard & Mouse / Vista Home Premium / Factory Refurbished
1 $434.99 $434.99

does it look like a good deal for the specs? my google search looked promising so I decided to drop the hammer and give it a try (I wont be letting go of my macbook though)

so what do I need to do to keep this thing stable? I'm used to macs so I basically don't do anything usually:D
 
Virus Protection, Regular Defrags, System Clean Ups.

Be careful not to install to much aswell, as it can really kill the boot time.
 
honestly Im also hoping to get an EFiX unit hwen they are back in stock in the US to try loading osx on it, simply as an experiment of course:eek:
 
I guess the TV tuner and 400GB hard drive should make for some nice video rips!

To keep it stable? Some components/computers play well together better than others... so hope for the best :p

Try to install only well known programs, buggy or badly programmed programs can cause problems for the entire computer.
Oh and maybe installing XP would be a better idea too.
 
MattZani said:
Virus Protection, Regular Defrags, System Clean Ups.

Be careful not to install to much aswell, as it can really kill the boot time.
Click to expand...

I like my Mac Mini and my 'hackintosh' just fine, but these really aren't that big of a deal.

Virus protection, anywhere from free (either free or free after rebates) to maybe 40-50 bucks a year.

Regular defrags... well, I've never run one on my XP box (turn off at night, so it's never run the 2am scheduled one); and it's been up and running for years.

System clean ups... well got me there, I usually reload every year or two just because I load alot of crap on it. Necessary... not really tho.

I can't really compare apples to apples, because the iMacs have the screen already, but I think most of them go for 800-1200 for the refurbs, so you're talking almost half the price.

Meh.

--rob
 
You shouldn't telling us, go to confession.

Here we are a bit more harsh ...

attachment.php
 
MattZani said:
Virus Protection, Regular Defrags, System Clean Ups.

Be careful not to install to much aswell, as it can really kill the boot time.
Click to expand...

There's more to PC's than windows! You could easily install a linux distribution like ubuntu or opensuse and have a great system, or even instal osx86
 
Doesn't sound too bad. You haven't mentioned what the processor speed is.

I sold my two Mac notebooks and have been using my two HPs. One of them I bought in July and it has Vista. The other is running Vista that I installed from the newer HPs install disks (yes it's permitted and legal and both copies are registered). I've got to say that Vista is just as stable if not more stable than XP was. I think since July, I've only had IE crash once. On my iMac. I had the whole system reboot for no reason yesterday as I sat and watched.

As far as defragmenting, I can't tell you the last time I ever used the program and I've always owned Windows computers. Never had a computer slow down on me from not using defrag.

Virus apps, well stay away from Norton. I used to like them but now it is just a resource hog. Use AVG antivirus, it's free. Vista does a much better job now at staying virus free by asking your permission to install things. In fact, I think it may ask permission a bit too much. It asks permission before you can go to the control panel.

3GB of ram will be fine on yor machine. One of my HPs came with 4GB, the other 2GB. The one with 2 hasn't had a problem doing anything that the 4GB machine can do.

Anyways, enjoy Vista, MS has actually done a good job with it as long as you have all the updates. I thought I would miss XP too much but I don't anymore now that I've gotten used to Vista.
 
I just bought norton Internet sec. 2009 and I would have to say it's 3 times faster than 2008. It installs in a minute.(seriously that's what they are touting for 2009 is that is not a resource hog). Get norton 2009.
 
I have never installed or run any "virus protection" software on any of my PCs and I have no problems with them.

I've also never used a disk defragmenter as I've never noticed any problems that would prompt me to use one.
 
neiltc13 said:
I've also never used a disk defragmenter as I've never noticed any problems that would prompt me to use one.
Click to expand...
I just defrag for the massive changes game patches make to my filesystem.

Then again it only means beating my friends to loading by 10 seconds. I still have to wait for them to load...

It'd be nice if OS X game with a built-in defragmentation utility for those users that run into Boot Camp partitioner problems.
 
neiltc13 said:
I have never installed or run any "virus protection" software on any of my PCs and I have no problems with them.

I've also never used a disk defragmenter as I've never noticed any problems that would prompt me to use one.
Click to expand...

Absolutely seconded. I've never even had so much as malicious spyware on my PC's, throughout. No bluescreen either. I know what it looks like, but only because I googled it.
 
If you get Nod32 for antivirus and webroot spysweeper for spyware you should be good. Nothing will prompt you to defrag but its a good idea to do it once a week or so.

However, I will warn you with Vista, some people think its stable. It absolutely isnt. Vista's stability depends on the SYSTEM you run it on. Some hardware configurations it works just fine on, a lot dont. Where I work on we used to have vista on all the machines (we downgraded thousands back to xp). Back when they all ran vista certain models had certain problems. These were on brand new freshly imaged machines with nothing on them.

People will argue and say "I have vista and it works fine for me!" good for them. Vista doesn't work for a lot of people (Including my last PC, and Vista is now the reason I own a mac :) Thank you Vista!)
 
chrono1081 said:
However, I will warn you with Vista, some people think its stable. It absolutely isnt. Vista's stability depends on the SYSTEM you run it on.
Click to expand...

Well OSX is the exact same as Vista in this regards. It's as stable as the system you run it on. Unfortunately the only systems you can run OSX (legally) on are ones that Apple have vetted to make sure it works like a dream.

If MS only sold Vista for Apple hardware then it would run like a dream, but MS has to support an almost unlimited amount of configurations with buggy drivers from unknown hardware companies.

Vista is as stable as OSX is, if run on the same hardware. It is made unstable by bad hardware, bad drivers and in some cases bad software.
 
thechidz said:
well, I picked up this deal on buy.com today.

Gateway® GM5643E Digital TV Desktop / Intel® Core™ 2 Quad / 3072 MB DDR2 / 400 GB Hard Drive / Analog/Digital TV Tuner / 15-in-1 Media Reader / Elite wireless keyboard & Mouse / Vista Home Premium / Factory Refurbished
1 $434.99 $434.99

does it look like a good deal for the specs? my google search looked promising so I decided to drop the hammer and give it a try (I wont be letting go of my macbook though)

so what do I need to do to keep this thing stable? I'm used to macs so I basically don't do anything usually:D
Click to expand...

It's ok. I still love you.

Kind regards,

Lord.

/booming voice and parted clouds.
 
thewireman said:
Just downgrade to Windows ME, then you will have the world's greatest computer. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Yes because we all know Mac OS9, which was ME's competitor, was so much better :)

Not to mention windows 2000 was out at the same time. That was one of the best operating systems at the time.
 
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