"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
The Medway Handyman wrote:
I know there are many people on this group who are knowledgeable about
computers, hence the question.

Got a flyer from Dell Computers a while ago offering what seemed like a
good
deal on a new PC. SWMBO decided we needed one.

Four phone calls, two e-mails & several visits to their web site later I
still can't seem to buy it at the price on the flyer.

A quick Google search reveals loads of bad news about their service.

Am I better off leaving them well alone?

If you're talking about a desktop why not build one? You'll save some
money, get a machine that is exactly as you want it and know how to fix it
if it goes wrong. I did this for my first ever PC about a year ago.

--
*If you try to fail, and succeed, which have you done?

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

I agree completely.

I built one around this "barebones" chassis from ASUS last year:
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=483539

All you need to add is processor; memory; HDD and DVD (and fancy graphics
card if you are inclined) plus of course OS.

Still purchased a DELL monitor and I am very happy.

D

On 2008-01-05 11:20:48 +0000, tony sayer said:

In article , John Rumm see.my.signa
scribeth thus
John Stumbles wrote:

Just before xmas I got a HP with 2G RAM and 120G HDD for about £350 from
Staples. I bought it there partly because I wanted to run Linux on

I had a DSG rep from PC World business offering me some similar sound
spec HP boxes at £200+VAT the other day - with a further £50 rebate!
They must be keen to shift them.

The other advice I would give is to make sure the system has 2Gb of
memory, any less with Vista and it will be sluggish.

I overheard a sales droid in Staples telling this to a customer and
assumed it was hype to sell better specced machines. My desktop at home

No, vista is a total dog on 512MB (even Home Basic), and fairly non
responsive in 1GB based on the machines I have tried. Number one
requirement specced by most of our customers seems to be "Can I still
have XP?"


I was in a local computer shop where they mainly repair than sell. Two
people had bought laptops from PC wurld and were almost begging matey to
put WIN XP on the machines, as they just couldn't stand another day of
the intrusiveness of Vista!..let alone the performance!...

This happened when people migrated from Windows 95 to 2000 as well.

On 2008-01-05 12:03:24 +0000, "Vortex" said:

I agree completely.

I built one around this "barebones" chassis from ASUS last year:
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=483539

This is a good way to go in that you have some of the major components
in one box. Disk drives are not normally an added techical risk, but
graphics cards can be. Equally, ASUS is a solid motherboard
manufacturer, and if one selects a reputable video card, that is low
risk. Generally it seems that anything with NVidia chipset is a bit
more solid than ATI.




All you need to add is processor; memory; HDD and DVD (and fancy
graphics card if you are inclined) plus of course OS.

Linux is a good choice here.




Still purchased a DELL monitor and I am very happy.

I agree. I have one too.



D

On Sat, 05 Jan 2008 11:33:50 +0000, Neil wrote:

One of many DIY sites for the build:
http://www.buildeasypc.com/
Cic.
Cic,
interesting site, but seems a bit specific and not quite up-to-date. I'm
not knocking it, it has some good info, but might not have enough for a
novice.
Such as making sure the motherboard, cpu, and ram will all fit together...
... probably have to update site every week or two to keep up ! hth
Neil


==================================
I agree entirely. In fact I find that the best way of getting the required
compatibility is to buy all the essentials from one knowledgeable supplier
who's prepared to 'guarantee' compatibility of the bits he sells.

Cic.

--
===================================
Using Ubuntu Linux
Windows shown the door
===================================

In article ,
"Doki" writes:
95% of PC problems are with software, not hardware.

That's an issue with only one particular manufacturer's software.

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]

In article 477f6d3a@qaanaaq,
Andy Hall writes:

On a cost basis, you won't, simply because you won't get the price
levels on one off purchases of the components that an integrator does.

The last time I built one was 3 years ago, and even then,
it wasn't worth building completely from scratch, but
from a barebones system. Nowadays, not even that's
cost effective in most cases, although there are reasons
other than cost one might still do so.

DIY for PCs is interesting because of the ability to select the
individual components, although even that has been dumbed down; i.e.
there are two significant video card players from the chipset
perspective - NVidia and ATI.

Make that NVidia and AMD, now.
Given how closely AMD and NVidia work together on chipsets,
I wouldn't be surprised if this drops to one main video card
player by some means or another.

For desktop systems, there are SATA
drives with a few different chipset options for the controller. After
that, it's pick which CPU and memory that you want.

and which type/how many slots you on the m/b and case drive bays.

Server platforms are a somewhat different game.

Yes, these are still much more manufacturer specific, which
is driven by significant development/innovation in a market where
there's fierce competition between vendors, not just on price but
also on features such as lights-out-management, live system
component replacement and expansion, power consumption reduction,
performance, size reduction, effective multi-core/multi-socket
designs, etc.

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]

On 2008-01-05 12:10:33 +0000, Huge said:

On 2008-01-05, Andy Hall wrote:

Tried Gnome? This seems to be a bit lighter weight.

Aaaeeeiiiii!!!! That's the first time I've ever heard anyone describe Gnome as
"lighter weight"!!

Compared with KDE with all the bits?

I just put a post on Groklaw about the OLPC campaign. I thought that
I'd add it here for advice on getting or not getting one and because I
think my post will end up in the can.

The Economist puts OLPC to rest
Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, January 05 2008 @ 05:55 AM EST
This is perhaps off-topic but then again, perhaps not. Any way The
Economist has a very depressing review of the XO: One clunky laptop
per child "Great idea. Shame about the mediocre computer"

My reply:

It's dated January the fourth. Perhaps that means last year? So how
did he know what Intel was going to do?

This is a comment from the link:

This leads to the final problem that has done the most
to disappoint OLPC's fans: the hubris, arrogance and
occasional self-righteousness of OLPC workers. They
treated all criticism as enemy fire to be deflected and
quashed rather than considered and possibly taken on
board.

I listed all the complaints that one poster on here wrote about when
he was sent a dud and the post -if not the entire thread, was pulled.
So don't come looking for too much parity here.

I'm not saying the article is accurate. It sounds like it was written
by an Intel salesman. Just that things can get slightly unecumenical
on here about certain topics.

Without being able to get my hands on one, I can't speak for myself.
Then I asked on another post what the reason was for not making them
available in supermarkets in North America and Western Europe.

So if it isn't clunky and tired, what is the reason?

"Andy Hall" wrote in message news:477f7c92@qaanaaq...
On 2008-01-05 12:03:24 +0000, "Vortex"
said:

I agree completely.

I built one around this "barebones" chassis from ASUS last year:
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=483539

This is a good way to go in that you have some of the major components in
one box. Disk drives are not normally an added techical risk, but
graphics cards can be. Equally, ASUS is a solid motherboard
manufacturer, and if one selects a reputable video card, that is low risk.
Generally it seems that anything with NVidia chipset is a bit more solid
than ATI.




All you need to add is processor; memory; HDD and DVD (and fancy graphics
card if you are inclined) plus of course OS.

Linux is a good choice here.




Still purchased a DELL monitor and I am very happy.

I agree. I have one too.


The one missing feature on this ASUS box is on board RAID controller. Not a
showstopper though.

Processor is Core 2 Quad, and lots of memory. Great for video editing and
rendering..

The one mistake I made was choosing a "noisy" HDD. Going to get an
(allegedly quiet) 1Tb Samsung Spinpoint shortly (£200 now). and relegate
other drive to backup duties.

Confess I went for Vista. I must be the only person on the planet who is
impressed. Especially imporessed with "Media Center" capability using a
Freeview card. When 2nd generation "Media Center Extender" boxes are
available shortly, I'll be buying one.

I had a dalliance with Linux a few years ago, and concluded that life's too
short.

D

"Mathew Newton" wrote in message
news:0a795c9f-e2a8-42a3-8f53-

What's the system you were after? Have a look at www.dmxdimension.com
- they list all the latest offers generally available

I see their cheapest Laptop comes with Ubuntu installed as the OS.

I wonder how many people have bought one of these on price alone without
realising what they were getting.







-

"Vortex" wrote in message
...

I had a dalliance with Linux a few years ago, and concluded that life's
too short.

Bang on. After having Ubuntu, which is supposed to work out of the box not
work out of the box on three systems, I decided there's no point messing
around with it. I've got enough things to do without spending time making a
PC work.

"The Medway Handyman" wrote in message
.uk...
I know there are many people on this group who are knowledgeable about
computers, hence the question.

Got a flyer from Dell Computers a while ago offering what seemed like a
good deal on a new PC. SWMBO decided we needed one.

Four phone calls, two e-mails & several visits to their web site later I
still can't seem to buy it at the price on the flyer.

The website automatically selects the three year warrenty for you. You have
to put it back to one to get the flyer price (usually).

A quick Google search reveals loads of bad news about their service.

Am I better off leaving them well alone?

I've always found mail order of things that are too big to go through the
slot in my front door to be a PITA (perhaps I have been very unlucky).

You can almost certainly match the price elsewhere

tim

On Jan 5, 2:46 pm, "Mark" wrote:
"Mathew Newton" wrote in message

news:0a795c9f-e2a8-42a3-8f53-



What's the system you were after? Have a look atwww.dmxdimension.com
- they list all the latest offers generally available

I see their cheapest Laptop comes with Ubuntu installed as the OS.

I wonder how many people have bought one of these on price alone without
realising what they were getting.

If they've gone via the dmxdimension site then that may indeed happen!

However to get Ubuntu on a PC from the Dell site itself requires some
digging - it doesn't even appear in the 'OS choice' list. I wish they
would promote it a bit more however I do concede that for many it
would be unsuitable and indeed verging on potential disappointment!

Mathew

"John Rumm" wrote in message
...
Andrew Gabriel wrote:

standard parts. Laptops however have no such concept.
I generally recommend avoiding buying laptops unless you
really need them -- they come at a substantial price premium,
and are much more difficult and expensive to repair and expand,
and tend to have a significantly shorter life.

Agree with the last bit, but the price premium on laptops (while still
there) is nothing like it was a year ago even.

Yep, I've just bought a 399 laptop. It was virtually impossible to buy a
desktop with monitor for less (and absolutely impossible to persuade the
droid to unbundle the monitor from the deal).

tim

"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Lobster wrote:
If you're talking about a desktop why not build one? You'll save some
money, get a machine that is exactly as you want it and know how to
fix it if it goes wrong. I did this for my first ever PC about a year
ago.

I can certainly see the benefits of building your own, but AFAICS for an
average sort-of joe-public-specced PC I can't see how you're ever going
to save money on building your own these days.

You'll not save much money over special offers on complete machines but
will get one *exactly* to your spec. It forces you into deciding what you
really want. You'll also have the not inconsiderable benefit of having a
warranty on each and every part - rather than the whole.

I prefer "It's broke, fix it, give my money back or send me another one" to
"It's broke, I've got to work out what's broke, then send it back, then fit
the replacement myself" etc. Some hardware faults can be very hard to
diagnose, and of course, there's no real comeback if the software packs up.

"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
The Medway Handyman wrote:
I know there are many people on this group who are knowledgeable about
computers, hence the question.

Got a flyer from Dell Computers a while ago offering what seemed like a
good
deal on a new PC. SWMBO decided we needed one.

Four phone calls, two e-mails & several visits to their web site later I
still can't seem to buy it at the price on the flyer.

A quick Google search reveals loads of bad news about their service.

Am I better off leaving them well alone?

If you're talking about a desktop why not build one? You'll save some
money,

Any saving that you might make on the parts disappears once you have to add
in the much higher cost of buying a single copy of Windoz (even the system
builder version).

Or were you expecting Dave to fight with Linux.

tim

In article ,
Doki wrote:
You'll not save much money over special offers on complete machines
but will get one *exactly* to your spec. It forces you into deciding
what you really want. You'll also have the not inconsiderable benefit
of having a warranty on each and every part - rather than the whole.

I prefer "It's broke, fix it, give my money back or send me another one"
to "It's broke, I've got to work out what's broke, then send it back,
then fit the replacement myself" etc. Some hardware faults can be very
hard to diagnose, and of course, there's no real comeback if the
software packs up.

You must love loading in/configuring your software if you actually want a
replacement machine when it breaks. ;-)

--
*If a turtle doesn't have a shell, is he homeless or naked?

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

"Andrew Gabriel" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"Doki" writes:
95% of PC problems are with software, not hardware.

That's an issue with only one particular manufacturer's software.

I don't agree. 95% of problems with software are because of the inability
of the user. If those 95% of uses who are unable to use software properly
had Linux installed, it would go wong for them as often as Windows does.

tim

tim..... wrote:
"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
The Medway Handyman wrote:
I know there are many people on this group who are knowledgeable
about computers, hence the question.

Got a flyer from Dell Computers a while ago offering what seemed
like a good
deal on a new PC. SWMBO decided we needed one.

Four phone calls, two e-mails & several visits to their web site
later I still can't seem to buy it at the price on the flyer.

A quick Google search reveals loads of bad news about their service.

Am I better off leaving them well alone?

If you're talking about a desktop why not build one? You'll save some
money,

Any saving that you might make on the parts disappears once you have
to add in the much higher cost of buying a single copy of Windoz
(even the system builder version).

Or were you expecting Dave to fight with Linux.

I have no intention of fighting with a character in a Peanuts cartoon...
especially one who is Charlie Browns best friend.


--
Dave - The Medway Handyman
www.medwayhandyman.co.uk
01634 717930
07850 597257

On Sat, 5 Jan 2008 11:28:19 +0000, tony sayer
wrote:

In article , Lobster
scribeth thus
Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
The Medway Handyman wrote:
I know there are many people on this group who are knowledgeable about
computers, hence the question.

Got a flyer from Dell Computers a while ago offering what seemed like a good
deal on a new PC. SWMBO decided we needed one.

Four phone calls, two e-mails & several visits to their web site later I
still can't seem to buy it at the price on the flyer.

A quick Google search reveals loads of bad news about their service.

Am I better off leaving them well alone?

If you're talking about a desktop why not build one? You'll save some
money, get a machine that is exactly as you want it and know how to fix it
if it goes wrong. I did this for my first ever PC about a year ago.

I can certainly see the benefits of building your own, but AFAICS for an
average sort-of joe-public-specced PC I can't see how you're ever going
to save money on building your own these days.

Last time I looked into doing this I was going to cannibalise my old PC,
and use what I could from that, however there was no way I could get
close to the overall cost of a new PC (which I bought monitor-less from
Dell).

David


Well if you but the bits from the right places you can make a better PC
especially some money directed at quite power units and low noise
cooling and of course you learn a bit and can mend the gubbins..

However unless the field support id very good expect to pack it off for
repair especially if its a laptop. For this very reason I bought a
couple of second hand dell latitude's quite good machines, from a place
locally that repairs them.. quite rare but worth it in case of need...


I have had three Dells and have built three to my own spec.

If you want a run of the mill home PC it is not worth building your
own. You will not be able to build the same spec for 250 quid as they
can sell you one for. However, if you are looking at overclocking - a
couple of huge drives - RAID - serious sound card and graphics then
build your own.

In article , Doki
says...

"Vortex" wrote in message
...

I had a dalliance with Linux a few years ago, and concluded that life's
too short.

Bang on. After having Ubuntu, which is supposed to work out of the box not
work out of the box on three systems, I decided there's no point messing
around with it. I've got enough things to do without spending time making a
PC work.



Ditto. I would really like to see open source take over
from Microsoft. Ubuntu installed fine on my computer. The
big problem was getting the internal modem to work with it.
In short it didn't and there didn't appear to be any
drivers to make it work. Wasted hours trying to sort it out
but gave up in the end.

Back to XP. I'm still avoiding hardware with Vista though.
--
David in Normandy

"Mathew Newton" wrote in message
news:7ea0ab40-6a35-4806-a384-

What's the system you were after? Have a look atwww.dmxdimension.com
- they list all the latest offers generally available

I see their cheapest Laptop comes with Ubuntu installed as the OS.

I wonder how many people have bought one of these on price alone without
realising what they were getting.

If they've gone via the dmxdimension site then that may indeed happen!

However to get Ubuntu on a PC from the Dell site itself requires some
digging - it doesn't even appear in the 'OS choice' list. I wish they
would promote it a bit more however I do concede that for many it
would be unsuitable and indeed verging on potential disappointment!

Mathew


"verging on potential disappointment!"

that could be the understatement of the year so far.

I think I will do a straw pole in the pub tonight just to see if Joe public
has the faintest idea about Ubuntu/Linux





-

Mark wrote:

I think I will do a straw pole in the pub tonight just to see if Joe public
has the faintest idea about Ubuntu/Linux

Well I'll be honest and tell you that I do know what Linux is but have
never ever seen it, and that I'd never heard of Ubuntu until this
afternoon...

What happens if you need to share files (or even view them?) with any of
the other 99% of the world who uses MS Office, for example? Presumably
any of these OS are a non-starter, surely?

David

In article ,
David in Normandy writes:

Ditto. I would really like to see open source take over
from Microsoft. Ubuntu installed fine on my computer. The
big problem was getting the internal modem to work with it.
In short it didn't and there didn't appear to be any
drivers to make it work. Wasted hours trying to sort it out
but gave up in the end.

Probably a Winmodem (which is just a phone line interface,
and not really a modem, as the modem is implemented in the
Windows driver.)

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]

"Lobster" wrote in message
news
Mark wrote:

I think I will do a straw pole in the pub tonight just to see if Joe
public has the faintest idea about Ubuntu/Linux

Well I'll be honest and tell you that I do know what Linux is but have
never ever seen it, and that I'd never heard of Ubuntu until this
afternoon...

What happens if you need to share files (or even view them?) with any of
the other 99% of the world who uses MS Office, for example? Presumably
any of these OS are a non-starter, surely?

David

Ha cue lots of people to tell you its fine you can do all that no problem.

Which is true,

..

..

..

..

sort of.



-

In article , David in
Normandy scribeth thus
In article , Doki
says...

"Vortex" wrote in message
...

I had a dalliance with Linux a few years ago, and concluded that life's
too short.

Bang on. After having Ubuntu, which is supposed to work out of the box not
work out of the box on three systems, I decided there's no point messing
around with it. I've got enough things to do without spending time making a
PC work.



Ditto. I would really like to see open source take over
from Microsoft. Ubuntu installed fine on my computer. The
big problem was getting the internal modem to work with it.
In short it didn't and there didn't appear to be any
drivers to make it work. Wasted hours trying to sort it out
but gave up in the end.

Back to XP. I'm still avoiding hardware with Vista though.

But how much longer for there is new hardware that doesn't have anything
other than Vista drivers..

Some sort of collusion maybe?..
--
Tony Sayer

In article ,
Lobster writes:
Mark wrote:

I think I will do a straw pole in the pub tonight just to see if Joe public
has the faintest idea about Ubuntu/Linux

Well I'll be honest and tell you that I do know what Linux is but have
never ever seen it, and that I'd never heard of Ubuntu until this
afternoon...

What happens if you need to share files (or even view them?) with any of
the other 99% of the world who uses MS Office, for example? Presumably
any of these OS are a non-starter, surely?

There's an opensource product called OpenOffice which can read/write
Microsoft office documents, and there are commercial versions of it
such as StarOffice (which it originally came from) from Sun. This
runs on all the popular unixs, Linux, and Windows. I put StarOffice
on my Mum's Windows PC a couple of years ago, and although she's only
a novice PC user, I don't think she has any idea she's not running
Microsoft Office (except things like macro viruses don't work on her
system when they do on all her colleagues':-).

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]

In article ,
Lobster wrote:
What happens if you need to share files (or even view them?) with any of
the other 99% of the world who uses MS Office, for example? Presumably
any of these OS are a non-starter, surely?

Those '99%' should share files using a universal file format like plain
text. Same as newsgroups, etc. But this doesn't suit the likes of BG who
wishes to tie up the world into his expensive systems.

--
*Go the extra mile. It makes your boss look like an incompetent slacker *

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

In article , tony sayer
says...
In article , David in
Normandy scribeth thus
In article , Doki
says...

"Vortex" wrote in message
...

I had a dalliance with Linux a few years ago, and concluded that life's
too short.

Bang on. After having Ubuntu, which is supposed to work out of the box not
work out of the box on three systems, I decided there's no point messing
around with it. I've got enough things to do without spending time making a
PC work.



Ditto. I would really like to see open source take over
from Microsoft. Ubuntu installed fine on my computer. The
big problem was getting the internal modem to work with it.
In short it didn't and there didn't appear to be any
drivers to make it work. Wasted hours trying to sort it out
but gave up in the end.

Back to XP. I'm still avoiding hardware with Vista though.

But how much longer for there is new hardware that doesn't have anything
other than Vista drivers..

Some sort of collusion maybe?..

What a dreadful thought. Hardware that only runs with
Vista! I'm hoping that before too long all hardware vendors
supply drivers for all operating systems. But that may be
pie in the sky.

In my humble opinion there are two main reasons why the
likes of Ubuntu haven't yet made much impact on Microsoft's
monopoly:

1. Lack of plug and play for Ubuntu. People expect to
install an operating system and for it to work, full stop.
No hunting around the Internet for drivers to get all the
hardware components working, or spending hours on forums
trying to work out how to get the computer running
properly.

2. Lack of simple to understand graphical interfaces for
everything. People expect to open windows and click things
or select items from drop down menu's, not to open up
configuration files using some obscure text editor and edit
scripts written in "Martian".

Until both points are fully addressed, I fear Linux will
remain largely for the computer geeks.
--
David in Normandy

Lobster wrote:

What happens if you need to share files (or even view them?) with any of
the other 99% of the world who uses MS Office, for example? Presumably
any of these OS are a non-starter, surely?

Not as bad as you might expect... part of the difficulty with some of
the free download versions of the various Linux's is that some of the
media playing extras need to be downloaded and installed separately due
to licensing issues.

If what you do is mainly productivity stuff (handle documents, play
media, email, web etc) then there is unlikely to be any great
difficulty. Games playing however will be somewhat more troublesome.



--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

In article ,
Andrew Gabriel says...
In article ,
David in Normandy writes:

Ditto. I would really like to see open source take over
from Microsoft. Ubuntu installed fine on my computer. The
big problem was getting the internal modem to work with it.
In short it didn't and there didn't appear to be any
drivers to make it work. Wasted hours trying to sort it out
but gave up in the end.

Probably a Winmodem (which is just a phone line interface,
and not really a modem, as the modem is implemented in the
Windows driver.)



I don't know. I will definitely give Ubuntu or it's
successor another go in the future if I've got more time to
try to sort out any problems. I think open source / free
licence software will eventually knock Microsoft off it's
spot, but it will take a few years. Microsoft can't compete
with "free" for ever, provided the competition is good
enough.
--
David in Normandy

"tim....." wrote in
:

"Andrew Gabriel" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"Doki" writes:
95% of PC problems are with software, not hardware.

That's an issue with only one particular manufacturer's software.

I don't agree. 95% of problems with software are because of the
inability of the user. If those 95% of uses who are unable to use
software properly had Linux installed, it would go wong for them
as often as Windows does.

Agreed. Whatever issues there are with MS software (and there are
many) these pale into insignificance next to the user-related,
'finger trouble' problems.

However, 'finger trouble' problems are often down to a combination of
the complexity of the software product and the simplicity of the user
. As someone who has spent (too many) years in the IT industry and
made a good living out of it, I still remain to be convinced that PC-
class technology is truly ready for business use. YMMV of course...

--
Richard Perkin
To email me, change the AT in the address below
richard.perkinATmyrealbox.com

It's is not, it isn't ain't, and it's it's, not its, if you mean it
is. If you don't, it's its. Then too, it's hers. It isn't her's.
It isn't our's either. It's ours, and likewise yours and theirs.
-- Oxford University Press, Edpress News

In message , writes
On 5 Jan,
T i m wrote:

If you do fancy d-i-y I'm sure there are many here who would be
willing to advise etc. As mentioned it generally won't be cheaper than
buying off the shelf but think of it like buying a hand made car
rather than a mass produced one g. The actual building will take
less time than deciding what you want or installing the OS[1] and
extras etc. ;-)

I reckon the actual building takes at most about 1.5 - 2 hours. Installing
the OS and upgrades will probably take a lot longer, but you can usually let
it get on with upgrades on its own.

As Tim says, the biggest part is deciding what you want. It's so different
each time with changes in marketing/technology, but still straightforward.


You can often get a bundle of mobo, memory and processor, which saves having
to faff on with finding compatible bits.

The days of incompatibility are, on the whole over

whe was the last time you found such a thing (well I did, last weekend
...., but)
--
geoff

On Sat, 05 Jan 2008 20:10:01 +0100, David in Normandy wrote:

In article , Andrew Gabriel
says...
In article ,
David in Normandy writes:

Ditto. I would really like to see open source take over from
Microsoft. Ubuntu installed fine on my computer. The big problem was
getting the internal modem to work with it. In short it didn't and
there didn't appear to be any drivers to make it work. Wasted hours
trying to sort it out but gave up in the end.

Probably a Winmodem (which is just a phone line interface, and not
really a modem, as the modem is implemented in the Windows driver.)



I don't know. I will definitely give Ubuntu or it's successor another go
in the future if I've got more time to try to sort out any problems. I
think open source / free licence software will eventually knock
Microsoft off it's spot, but it will take a few years. Microsoft can't
compete with "free" for ever, provided the competition is good enough.

==================================
Over the past dozen years I've tried several Linux versions and found them
difficult and temperamental. Ubuntu is quite different from other
versions. I first tried it (Live CD) about a year ago and it found all my
hardware immediately and without any problems. I then did a full install
as 'dual boot' with Win2000 and again it worked perfectly first time. The
only exception was that it failed to operate my wireless network card
despite the fact that it was found and recognised. I've since repeated the
process on my other three computers (2 x MSI / 2 x Asus based), again
without any problems except the wireless network cards which isn't a
problem as I have a wired network which works perfectly with Ubuntu.

I'm now in the last stages of final transfer / conversion of old material
from Windows based software to fully Linux based software and I will
probably make Linux my only OS when this process is complete.

I would suggest that anyone with an interest in a free OS should try the
'Live' Ubuntu CD to see how well it works. It will be slow but will show
how well the full version will work. Dual boot is always an option and
Ubuntu manages this very well.

Cic.

--
===================================
Using Ubuntu Linux
Windows shown the door
===================================

In article , Andrew Gabriel
scribeth thus
In article ,
Lobster writes:
Mark wrote:

I think I will do a straw pole in the pub tonight just to see if Joe public
has the faintest idea about Ubuntu/Linux

Well I'll be honest and tell you that I do know what Linux is but have
never ever seen it, and that I'd never heard of Ubuntu until this
afternoon...

What happens if you need to share files (or even view them?) with any of
the other 99% of the world who uses MS Office, for example? Presumably
any of these OS are a non-starter, surely?

There's an opensource product called OpenOffice which can read/write
Microsoft office documents, and there are commercial versions of it
such as StarOffice (which it originally came from) from Sun. This
runs on all the popular unixs, Linux, and Windows. I put StarOffice
on my Mum's Windows PC a couple of years ago, and although she's only
a novice PC user, I don't think she has any idea she's not running
Microsoft Office (except things like macro viruses don't work on her
system when they do on all her colleagues':-).


Openoffice doesn't always open Word docs as the Microsnot program does....
--
Tony Sayer

On Sat, 05 Jan 2008 16:43:26 +0000, Owain wrote:

Weatherlawyer wrote:
This is perhaps off-topic but then again, perhaps not. Any way The
Economist has a very depressing review of the XO: One clunky laptop per
child "Great idea. Shame about the mediocre computer" ... Then I asked
on another post what the reason was for not making them available in
supermarkets in North America and Western Europe. So if it isn't clunky
and tired, what is the reason?

Because you can get a moderately spiffing new laptop for £399 in Tesco.
The OLPC computer is designed for its target market; many of its
features such as its dual-mode screen are irrelevant or even undesirable
for mass-market users. It also has very limited operating system
support, needing an OS that can run from flash memory, which rules out
anything by MS probably later than circa DOS 3.

The manufacturing and distribution model is also geared to national
orders of c. a million units.

The main reason AIUI for not selling it commercially is that many of the
big US IT players have given staff, expertise and intellectual property
to the project and would not be happy to then see it competing in their
own market.

There has been a 'buy one, give one to charity' scheme running in the
states but that's been in limited numbers only.

In article ,
tony sayer writes:
In article , Andrew Gabriel
scribeth thus
There's an opensource product called OpenOffice which can read/write
Microsoft office documents, and there are commercial versions of it
such as StarOffice (which it originally came from) from Sun. This
runs on all the popular unixs, Linux, and Windows. I put StarOffice
on my Mum's Windows PC a couple of years ago, and although she's only
a novice PC user, I don't think she has any idea she's not running
Microsoft Office (except things like macro viruses don't work on her
system when they do on all her colleagues':-).

Openoffice doesn't always open Word docs as the Microsnot program does....

I've not noticed any differences with StarOffice 8 (or 7, IIRC).
Previous versions didn't always get some things like positioning
of tables right, although document was always readable even so.

Must admit I haven't tried OpenOffice, only StarOffice, but they're
supposed to be very similar, based on mostly the same code.

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]

David in Normandy wrote:

Ditto. I would really like to see open source take over
from Microsoft. Ubuntu installed fine on my computer. The
big problem was getting the internal modem to work with it.
In short it didn't and there didn't appear to be any
drivers to make it work. Wasted hours trying to sort it out
but gave up in the end.

For the £10 it would have cost for a compatible modem, that would have
been a more pragmatic solution...

--
Cheers,

John.

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David in Normandy wrote:

What a dreadful thought. Hardware that only runs with
Vista! I'm hoping that before too long all hardware vendors
supply drivers for all operating systems. But that may be
pie in the sky.

In my humble opinion there are two main reasons why the
likes of Ubuntu haven't yet made much impact on Microsoft's
monopoly:

1. Lack of plug and play for Ubuntu. People expect to
install an operating system and for it to work, full stop.
No hunting around the Internet for drivers to get all the
hardware components working, or spending hours on forums
trying to work out how to get the computer running
properly.

To be fair winXP is not much better at plug and play - loads of things
fail to install correctly and need the hunt the internet solution. The
difference is that most people never install windows - it comes on their
PC. Hence installing any OS from scratch can be a bit of a shock.

2. Lack of simple to understand graphical interfaces for
everything. People expect to open windows and click things
or select items from drop down menu's, not to open up
configuration files using some obscure text editor and edit
scripts written in "Martian".

Yup, true. Having said that needing to edit the registry in windows is
equally scary for most. In some aspects windows has even gone backwards
in this respect - just look how they have scattered about the networking
configuration options in vista compared to XP.

Until both points are fully addressed, I fear Linux will
remain largely for the computer geeks.

The Asus Eee may alter that a little...


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

Si wrote:

Don't their flyers have a code which you type in to find the particular
offer? Do you want to buy that particular offer? Why not use their
web-site to choose exactly what you need?


Because often the flyer price is less than the identical machine spec'ed
through the web site.

Andy