A Windows XP help forum. PCbanter

If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Go Back   Home » PCbanter forum » Windows 10 » Windows 10 Help Forum
Site Map Home Register Authors List Search Today's Posts Mark Forums Read Web Partners

Still shopping, one or two easy questions



 
 
Thread Tools Rate Thread Display Modes
  #16  
Old August 29th 20, 01:52 AM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10
Paul[_32_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 11,873
Default Still shopping, one or two easy questions

micky wrote:
In alt.comp.os.windows-10, on Fri, 28 Aug 2020 09:06:22 -0000 (UTC),
Chris wrote:

Rene Lamontagne wrote:
On 2020-08-27 3:38 p.m., Chris wrote:
micky wrote:
In alt.comp.os.windows-10, on Thu, 27 Aug 2020 14:11:13 -0000 (UTC),
Chris wrote:

On 27 Aug 2020 at 06:20:19 BST, "micky" wrote:

I was busy for a while so I'm back to shopping.

Microcenter only has branches in 20 cities or so, but their webpage is
very good in terms of the detail it gives.

For example, they usually? tell you how much RAM it comes with, how many
slots for RAM there are, how many are used, and what's the maximum
amount of RAM you can put in.

And it lets you filter on whether it has an optical drive or not.

1) Optical drives it splits into 3 kinds, DVD-ROM, DVD-RW, and DVD+/-RW.
Isn't any of these good enough for me? I don't copy movies. And I
just bought some blank, DVD+R's but I think I can still exchange them.
Writeable DVD standards are/were a mess:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD_recordable

Nowadays I think all drives can read/write to any media.
That's one of the big reasons I asked. I though so too, but of the 11
PCs that are left after I applied a few filters, 8 of them say they have
DVD-ROM

Here's one of them. It says the same thing in the Overview and in the
Specs. This one is $1300 !!!!! The others are cheaper but I can get
you folks some urls for them ief you want.

https://www.microcenter.com/product/...sktop-computer

Is it really read only?
Looks like it. It's a slimline model.

You know I wouldn't base your decision on a $20 part. Get the machine you
want and then add the DVD drive after if you want it. A USB one works just
as well.

That machine is expensive because of the Quadro card.

Each to his own but I would deem that a pretty poor machine for the
price, especially an SFF.

Can't disagree. A Quadro card is of no use to most people.


So is this basically a criticism of the manufacturer, or microcenter?

I've presumed the maker sets the wholesale price and vendors mark
everything up about the same percentage. So if it's not worth the
money, it's not because of microcenter. ?????


It's charging what the market will bear.

A Geforce and a Quadro can be using *exactly* the same GPU.

The Geforce (gamer card), the driver is purposely gimped.
If you start Autocad, and put fifty one items in your drawing,
suddenly you notice you can't rotate the objects very fast any more.

If you switch over to using your Quadro-containing machine, the
fifty item drawing is as fast as the fifty one item drawing.
Maybe even with ten thousand items in the drawing, it's still
as fast as you'd expect. And this is a driver which is not gimped.

So you're basically paying extra to be rolled over a barrel
and abused. "It would be a shame if something were to happen
to the driver on that video card" the two thugs said.
"For a small monthly fee, you even get to keep your
knee caps".

Even in the used market, the Quadro still has value. It has
value for the school students who have the student edition
of Autocad and are doing course-work. And the course-work
would be measurably easier if their Geforce video cards
didn't suck at it. But if they price refurbs, they notice
that the price is still high, when the Quadro is present.
Even if the Quadro is a museum piece.

I remember running some OpenGL benchmark, and thinking to
myself "how can anyone put up with the molasses speed?".
Well, I was testing with a gamer video card of course.

I don't know how the driver decides what to do. Whether
it just ruins an AutoCad session and leaves your Quake III
alone ? There must be a title-specific behavior involved here.

Paul
Ads
  #17  
Old August 29th 20, 05:28 AM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10
Chris
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 832
Default Still shopping, one or two easy questions

micky wrote:
In alt.comp.os.windows-10, on Fri, 28 Aug 2020 09:06:22 -0000 (UTC),
Chris wrote:

Rene Lamontagne wrote:
On 2020-08-27 3:38 p.m., Chris wrote:
micky wrote:
In alt.comp.os.windows-10, on Thu, 27 Aug 2020 14:11:13 -0000 (UTC),
Chris wrote:

On 27 Aug 2020 at 06:20:19 BST, "micky" wrote:

I was busy for a while so I'm back to shopping.

Microcenter only has branches in 20 cities or so, but their webpage is
very good in terms of the detail it gives.

For example, they usually? tell you how much RAM it comes with, how many
slots for RAM there are, how many are used, and what's the maximum
amount of RAM you can put in.

And it lets you filter on whether it has an optical drive or not.

1) Optical drives it splits into 3 kinds, DVD-ROM, DVD-RW, and DVD+/-RW.
Isn't any of these good enough for me? I don't copy movies. And I
just bought some blank, DVD+R's but I think I can still exchange them.

Writeable DVD standards are/were a mess:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD_recordable

Nowadays I think all drives can read/write to any media.

That's one of the big reasons I asked. I though so too, but of the 11
PCs that are left after I applied a few filters, 8 of them say they have
DVD-ROM

Here's one of them. It says the same thing in the Overview and in the
Specs. This one is $1300 !!!!! The others are cheaper but I can get
you folks some urls for them ief you want.

https://www.microcenter.com/product/...sktop-computer

Is it really read only?

Looks like it. It's a slimline model.

You know I wouldn't base your decision on a $20 part. Get the machine you
want and then add the DVD drive after if you want it. A USB one works just
as well.

That machine is expensive because of the Quadro card.


Each to his own but I would deem that a pretty poor machine for the
price, especially an SFF.


Can't disagree. A Quadro card is of no use to most people.


So is this basically a criticism of the manufacturer, or microcenter?


Neither. You need to have a clearer idea of what you need. It seems you're
focusing on the DVD drive, and because they're rare these days you end Up
finding esoteric and expensive builds.

Firstly set yourself a budget. This is the most important thing. Then set
yourself realistic minimum requirements like form factor, RAM, disk space
and perhaps CPU but as you're currently using a very old machine any
current CPU will blow its socks off. Then add your nice to haves like the
DVD drive which aren't critical and can always be added separately. Finally
go shopping around to get a short list and weigh up the differences like
brand, warranty, delivery options, support etc.

Don't be tempted by anything above your budget. There's so much choice you
can always find something that matches your needs, even new.

I've presumed the maker sets the wholesale price and vendors mark
everything up about the same percentage. So if it's not worth the
money, it's not because of microcenter. ?????


It's not worth the money *for you*. Your needs AFAICT do not require a high
end graphics card.



  #18  
Old August 29th 20, 04:06 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10
Ken Blake[_7_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 569
Default Still shopping, one or two easy questions

On 8/28/2020 5:27 PM, Rene Lamontagne wrote:
On 2020-08-28 5:41 p.m., micky wrote:
In alt.comp.os.windows-10, on Fri, 28 Aug 2020 09:06:22 -0000 (UTC),
Chris wrote:

Rene Lamontagne wrote:
On 2020-08-27 3:38 p.m., Chris wrote:
micky wrote:
In alt.comp.os.windows-10, on Thu, 27 Aug 2020 14:11:13 -0000 (UTC),
Chris wrote:

On 27 Aug 2020 at 06:20:19 BST, "micky" wrote:

I was busy for a while so I'm back to shopping.

Microcenter only has branches in 20 cities or so, but their webpage is
very good in terms of the detail it gives.

For example, they usually? tell you how much RAM it comes with, how many
slots for RAM there are, how many are used, and what's the maximum
amount of RAM you can put in.

And it lets you filter on whether it has an optical drive or not.

1) Optical drives it splits into 3 kinds, DVD-ROM, DVD-RW, and DVD+/-RW.
Isn't any of these good enough for me? I don't copy movies. And I
just bought some blank, DVD+R's but I think I can still exchange them.

Writeable DVD standards are/were a mess:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD_recordable

Nowadays I think all drives can read/write to any media.

That's one of the big reasons I asked. I though so too, but of the 11
PCs that are left after I applied a few filters, 8 of them say they have
DVD-ROM

Here's one of them. It says the same thing in the Overview and in the
Specs. This one is $1300 !!!!! The others are cheaper but I can get
you folks some urls for them ief you want.

https://www.microcenter.com/product/...sktop-computer

Is it really read only?

Looks like it. It's a slimline model.

You know I wouldn't base your decision on a $20 part. Get the machine you
want and then add the DVD drive after if you want it. A USB one works just
as well.

That machine is expensive because of the Quadro card.


Each to his own but I would deem that a pretty poor machine for the
price, especially an SFF.

Can't disagree. A Quadro card is of no use to most people.


So is this basically a criticism of the manufacturer, or microcenter?

I've presumed the maker sets the wholesale price and vendors mark
everything up about the same percentage. So if it's not worth the
money, it's not because of microcenter. ?????


criticism of the machine and the price. as Chris said a quadro card is a
poor choice for what you do, The price of it is too high, The SFF is a
crappy thing to work on or expand, later if needed. Believe me I have
worked on a few and hated them all.

If you like Dell go to their site and look around, I'm sure there prices
will be better, My first Windows 95 machine was a dell and it was great.

Also 2 good places to look at are Amazon and Newegg, both have great
machines at good prices. They have a huge variety so you can pick and
choose whatever features you want,
Delivery is fast and warranty's are good.




I don't think anyone has mentioned it, but there's another choice.
Instead of buying a brand-name computer, choose the particular
components you want and and either build it yourself or have someone
build it for you. That has the advantage of letting you choose
higher-quality components rather than the lower-quality components with
the same specs that Dell, or some other manufacturer, might choose.

It has another advantage. It lets you buy and install a retail copy of
Windows, rather than getting the OEM copy that comes with pre-built
computers. An OEM copy of Windows has a major disadvantage: its license
ties it permanently to the first computer it's installed on. It can
never be moved to another, and if the computer dies, its Windows license
dies with it. If you ever change the motherboard/CPU, Microsoft
considers it to be a different computer, and your Windows license dies
there too.

Building it yourself is easy. It's mostly just a matter of plugging the
components together, and isn't much different from plugging together the
components of a stereo system. The only major difference is that the
computer components are inside a case.

The disadvantage of building it yourself is that if something doesn't
work, it can hard to figure out what's wrong and also hard to return
defective parts. If you have it built for you, it's the builders
responsibility to fix it.


This alternative can be a little more expensive than a pre-built brand
name computer, but it also can be worth the extra cost.

--
Ken
 




Thread Tools
Display Modes Rate This Thread
Rate This Thread:

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

vB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off






All times are GMT +1. The time now is 08:26 PM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.6.4
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Copyright ©2004-2024 PCbanter.
The comments are property of their posters.