The Dell I mentioned a week ago turned out to be a turkey. It was a Dell Studio 15, but it vibrated so strongly that my desk shook, and also had a headache-inducing mid-tone howl. It’s going back, naturally. Today I went out and got whatever was for sale in local shops, which turned out to be a Sony Vaio. The Sony actually seems very nice.
Both it and my old Vista machine are now chained together, moving 250Gb of data across. After that, I need to install lots of software — probably on Monday, I would guess, as I don’t use a PC on Sundays. Meanwhile I’ve found an even older laptop on which I am typing this.
I apologise if any correspondence goes unanswered until I am back up and running properly.
The Vista machine (a Dell Inspiron 1720) started having problems. Worse yet, I was out of disk space for all the PDF’s of books that I need and want. The new machine has twice the disk space. It also has an “eSata” port — apparently that will allow an external hard disk to run at a reasonable speed — USB hard disks are hopelessly slow. If so, I can put my PDF collection on such a drive, and not need quite so much on the local hard disk.
That’s why Mac users exist!
^^ macs are nice… I love my macbook.
But… they are not an end all, especially since Mr. Pearse has his QuickGreek and QuickGreek projects. I would be careful with the sony though, they are pretty, but everyone I know who has owned one has had battery problems.
Besides, a lot of what people complain about on PC’s is Vista related (or at the very least Windows related.) and I hear Windows 7 was a big improvement. If he gets sick of windows, he can always install a free version of linux and dual boot (he could also have a mac that boots windows too, I suppose.).
My brother’s laptop has just about as many problems with Windows 7 as he had with Vista. (Actually, Windows 7 is really Windows 6.1—a minor revision of Vista. It still has the same compatibility issues with previous versions of Windows as Vista did.)
I recommend you all the EEE-Box of Asus: completely silent, super light (for travellers). Just a box. You’ll need a screen, a keyboard, a usb-hub, etc. But then I have a question, as an ex-mac user full of regrets to the tranquillity given by a mac screen: how do you know a good screen for your PC from a bad one ?