EntropySink
Technical & Scientific => Hardware => Topic started by: ober on November 12, 2013, 08:51:51 AM
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So I came downstairs this morning and found my wife's computer (my old one) on a black screen saying it could not boot to disk. The bios does not recognize the HD at all and rebooting does not help. I fear HD failure but curious if anyone has any other ideas. When I get home tonight I will try to connect it to my computer and see if the drive is dead or not. I had no signs of it dying so this is kind of out of left field. Sucks but I don't think my wife will lose anything except for some downtime.
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I might just say fuck it and get her a new laptop. Any suggestions? I'm looking in the 400-600 range. Needs to be Windows, but no other major requirements. Any brands I should avoid?
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Or just get a new tower. Hmm...
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I have given up on keeping up. I usually just get a cheap dell with a warranty these days. Replace it when it breaks. The end.
Nevertheless, sorry for your loss. Sometimes it just sucks to have to replace something that only the day before was working just fine for your purposes.
My main computer in my home office broke. I resisted the urge to go out and buy a new one right away. Surprisingly a year has gone by. I still want a replacement... just don't want to invest the money... and I have more compute than most people need in their lives anyway.
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Tower.
You already have the case, media drive, and possibly the power supply.
You will need a mobo, memory, CPU and video solution.
Laptop? Avoid Toshiba. Get one with touch and a matte screen. Read the hell out of reviews. This is a great time of the year to get one.
Best brands? Lenovo and Asus. Shockingly Acer is giving them a run.
When you get closer to a decision yell and we can chew it over.
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Decision may be made as early as tonight. I pondered rebuilding what I have... but even getting her mid-range hardware puts me in the 300-400 range and that's re-using the PSU, video card, DVD drive, and case. And that stuff is 5 years old. And what if the problem is the PSU? I'd hate to buy all that stuff and find that to be faulty or have that die in another year. I think I just need to replace the whole thing.
I think a tower might be the way to go but the laptops are in the same range. Not that she needs the mobility, but it would be easy to hand that to the kids in a few years.
Decisions.
Oh, and even on top of the hard drive... the internet drops randomly several times a day on that computer so I'm thinking it's either a bad motherboard or something else. It wasn't a problem when I used it but was an issue since installing Windows 8. I replaced drivers several times to no avail. I don't think it's the powerline units either because it happened on the wireless too.
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Avoid Toshiba.
I have only anecdotal reasoning, but my parents bought a toshiba at BJ's and it was a POS from the day they brought it home. Slow as f*ck and constantly crashing. All they do is surf facebook and check e-mail and it couldn't even handle that. They just bought a surface tablet (like 4 days before the new models came out) and seem to really like it. Go figure.
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Toshiba has the worst support in the industry.
Laptops are awesome for portability and minimizing footprint.
Towers tend to hold up better over time and can generally be tweaked and repaired to help out.
So typically time versus value towers win it over and over. The reason is that full sized components are simply more powerful and thus stay valid longer. They call it having longer legs. Compare a typical laptop core i7/i5 to that of a full sized version. The mobile versions are dual core and the full sized versions are quad core. Though there is the odd mobile quad core i7 that makes for expensive gear.
The tower wins unless you want portable or go with refurb gear.
I say spend a bit more to get her tower up to modern specs and add a video card later if needed.
Check this out...
Next Post
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Keep the tower she has or use your tower $30.
Keep the media player.
Intel Core i5 CPU with decent integrated 4600 graphics $195.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116942
Hard Drive is up to you as I have no idea what kind of storage she needs $70.
Mobo $64.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813132044
PS $50.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139028
Memory $55.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820313353
Not so bad. You take your time and you will get sales and rebates.
Laptops that don't suck start at $600 even as refurbs. Lots of great $400 deals but they are sketchy and typically have odd issues like shitty displays, no license keys , non-upgrade-able memory, and on and on. If you go that way be careful to read reviews from good sources on the exact model and generation of that model. Laptops have multiple generations within a single model that fix touch pad, monitor, battery, etc issues. So be very aware of this kind of thing.
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http://slickdeals.net/permadeal/106026/tigerdirect---asus-q500a-touchscreen-laptop-refurbished-core-i7-3632qm-2.2-ghz-8gb-ddr3-750gb-hdd-15.6-1920x1080-lcd-6-cell-win-8
http://1sale.com/electronics/computers-tablets/t410-2522bf3/
http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-Quadro-NVS-3100M.24738.0.html
http://bensbargains.net/categories/notebooks-83/
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I think I'm leaning towards just getting the parts and rebuilding. I think the PS is probably fine and if I go with the other parts you mentioned above, I can do it for around 400. I might replace the fans in that case too (keeping the one I have).
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Does anyone know if I will have to jump through hoops to install Windows 8 on a new HD since I already installed and activated it?
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I assume you are not talking about OEM.
If you own a clown suit, you should consider wearing it. You will have to call phone activation and explain you are moving from a broken computer. They probably will give you a new product key.
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Coworker just told me you should get three activations per key. So you might be good to go. He also said that when he had to call phone activation, they didn't give him a hard time at all. It was quick.
So maybe you can leave the clown suit in the closet. Let me know how it turns out.
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I have an OEM copy. Does that make a difference?
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Yes. It was cheaper because it is locked to that PC build.
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Bullshit. There is no way. The only more expensive version was the pro version.
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OEM is locked to your build.
Retail is another story.
Correct me if I am wrong or there are details I am missing.
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I have an OEM copy. Does that make a difference?
That is supposed to go with the original computer only (cannot be moved). I suppose you can just say you have broken components and are rebuilding those components.
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OEM is locked to your build.
Retail is another story.
Correct me if I am wrong or there are details I am missing.
Exactly right AFAIK.
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Omg this is going to piss me off and might change my course of action.
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Windows Vista?
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No, if anything it would take me from building to buying. Another $90 puts the build above some of the desktops I was considering.
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Still a better machine if you build.
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No, if anything it would take me from building to buying. Another $90 puts the build above some of the desktops I was considering.
Yeah... I almost always just get a decent big-box company computer with an OEM OS. Use it for a couple of years and replace it when it is broken.
I haven't built my own computer in 10 years. But I don't have high compute/mem/video needs. For gaming, I use consoles (when I get a moment to play). And our computers usually end up being a place to work on a periodic word document, surf the web and check email. Don't need a superfly video card to do that.
Since you said it is for your wife, maybe you should just grab something prebuilt with a warranty and call it a day?
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She needs to be able to do high def graphics work so a standard OTS product isn't ideal (without paying more than necessary). I'd rather build my own. Anyone know how to contact Microsoft?
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Just chatted with Microsoft. Seems like it should be fine:
From a command window:
type: SLUI 3
Hit Enter.
Enter your key and click on Verify or Activate to reactivate your reinstalled Windows 8 Operating system.
So I guess I will see how it goes.
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:dblthumb2:
HD graphics work utilizes hyperthreading, so you may consider the i7 series for her. Unlike gaming most graphics suits use the shite outta that.
For video maybe a 660Ti.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E1681412545
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eh.. I'll stick with the i5 and the current video card she has until she really decides to get into it fulltime.
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So I ordered the processor, RAM, and mobo you suggested Knuck. I also grabbed a WD Black HD for her. That should get her back up and running. I'm going to use the 460 GTX that I had for her as I assume that even though it is an older card, it's still likely better than the onboard graphics. I will use the old case and power supply and DVD drive.
Sidenote... she is back using her old laptop and said she misses Windows 8. She got used to it and going back to Vista sucks. I have converted her. :D
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http://www.game-debate.com/gpu/index.php?gid=781&gid2=657&compare=intel-hd-graphics-4000-desktop-vs-geforce-gtx-460-se
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and the latest version of hers...
http://www.game-debate.com/gpu/index.php?gid=882&gid2=657&compare=geforce-gtx-760-vs-geforce-gtx-460-se
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Technically, this is my old card vs new card:
http://www.game-debate.com/gpu/index.php?gid=881&gid2=389&compare=geforce-gtx-770-vs-geforce-gtx-460
And yeah, even with 'decent' integrated video, it's not even a fair comparison.
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So... now I'm really fuckin pissed. I talked to 2 different MS techs last night. Both said I have to buy another license of W8. So I just took $90 and threw it down the fucking drain. This is complete and utter bullshit. Why wouldn't they have exceptions for this sort of thing? Surely this happens to some people? I had it installed for less than 2 months and now I have to go and buy another copy? WTF? So the only way to ever start over with an OEM license is to image it and never change the hardware? Who came up with this bullshit? Oh, right. The fucking money-grubbers.
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Oh, another note. That motherboard you suggested was microATX. I have never seen a mobo so freaking small! it only had 1 chassis fan connector so I had to power the second one another way.
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So I just chatted online with another person from MS that also said I should be able to activate it. The other thing I didn't mention is that I did the 'activation by phone' last night and it said it was successful but it still showed as not activated. So I'm not sure if it worked or not.
Either way, I'm going to check again tonight and if it didn't activate I'm going to call them. I got a number from the person I chatted with.
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Oh, another note. That motherboard you suggested was microATX. I have never seen a mobo so freaking small! it only had 1 chassis fan connector so I had to power the second one another way.
Micro-ATX is fine. My current mobo is the same. Lat one too. Unless you are going with multiple simultaneous video cards or have unusual hardware like a cutter they don't have much of a downside. I never use the mobo to control fans, with the exception of the CPU fan. Direct to the power supply for all fans. It decreases the power you need to run through the mobo which is a good thing.
It is mini-ATX you have to watch. Those can be odd ducks. Typically HT rigs use them.
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So I just chatted online with another person from MS that also said I should be able to activate it. The other thing I didn't mention is that I did the 'activation by phone' last night and it said it was successful but it still showed as not activated. So I'm not sure if it worked or not.
Either way, I'm going to check again tonight and if it didn't activate I'm going to call them. I got a number from the person I chatted with.
Damn bro. Sorry you are having such a run-around. :(
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:D :D :D :D
Came home today and finished installing 8.1. I think getting it to register as being activated just required a reboot. SO, for anyone going through this with an OEM copy, start the windows activation and choose the 'phone activation' method. It is fully automated. It will ask you for 9 sets of numbers that you say or key into the phone. Then it will read you back a set of 7 numbers (I think). After that, it will ask you how many times you have installed the OS (I said "one") and then it will ask how many other computers it was installed on (I think that was the question) and I said "zero". It said to proceed and when I did it said all was good.
I did the phone activation Thursday night and going to the computer's properties did not immediately show that it was activated which is why I got worried. BUT, all is good now. I don't have to purchase another license!! :-)
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8 vs 8.1?
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:D :D :D :D
Came home today and finished installing 8.1. I think getting it to register as being activated just required a reboot. SO, for anyone going through this with an OEM copy, start the windows activation and choose the 'phone activation' method. It is fully automated. It will ask you for 9 sets of numbers that you say or key into the phone. Then it will read you back a set of 7 numbers (I think). After that, it will ask you how many times you have installed the OS (I said "one") and then it will ask how many other computers it was installed on (I think that was the question) and I said "zero". It said to proceed and when I did it said all was good.
I did the phone activation Thursday night and going to the computer's properties did not immediately show that it was activated which is why I got worried. BUT, all is good now. I don't have to purchase another license!! :-)
Yeay! :)
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I don't think 8.1 mattered. I think the restart changed the status.
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Sorta looking for your take on the difference...
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OH... dude, I can't read your mind. 8.1 is a big 'meh' to me. I see very little difference. The addition of the start button is of no use to me and I haven't really noticed anything major otherwise. It literally had no impact on me.
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:D :D :D :D
Came home today and finished installing 8.1. I think getting it to register as being activated just required a reboot. SO, for anyone going through this with an OEM copy, start the windows activation and choose the 'phone activation' method. It is fully automated. It will ask you for 9 sets of numbers that you say or key into the phone. Then it will read you back a set of 7 numbers (I think). After that, it will ask you how many times you have installed the OS (I said "one") and then it will ask how many other computers it was installed on (I think that was the question) and I said "zero". It said to proceed and when I did it said all was good.
I did the phone activation Thursday night and going to the computer's properties did not immediately show that it was activated which is why I got worried. BUT, all is good now. I don't have to purchase another license!! :-)
Guess I'm kind of late to the party, but I've activated all like...5 of my Windows installs this way.
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What version do you have? I got an OEM System Builder copy.
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Um, whatever version of Windows 7 I could get from school at the time. Haha, so maybe it's different.
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Um, whatever version of Windows 7 I could get from school at the time. Haha, so maybe it's different.
Full retail.
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The licenses have changed quite a bit between 7 and 8 from what I read.
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Do tell.
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I don't remember exact details, but I saw a lot of 'you can do x with windows 7 and y with windows 8'. I would have to go digging through the licenses to see what the actual differences are.
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How about I just poke myself with rusty needles instead
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That's what I was thinking.