Upgrade advice

[Oakie]

Seems my dear old HP PC is on it's last legs ... continual windows errors causing reboots and very slow. It's done alright though at about 9 years old.

Biting the bullet and looking at new PCs. What I want to know is what I should do about the existing MS Office suite? I have the Academic version of Office installed ... 2007 version which of course was running under Win7. When I buy a new Win10 PC am I able to install the old version of Office on the new PC or is a much more sensible option to again bite the bullet and fork out for Office 365? I really only need Excel and Word.

Any other advice about what traps to avoid would be welcome. I used to know this stuff for work but haven't needed to for quite a few years now so I'm quite out of date. (PC is really just used for domestic stuff ... not gaming)

Oh, the actual copying of my files from old to new should be easy as it's all under one folder and I have a copy on an external hard drive too.

[mashman]

Seems my dear old HP PC is on it's last legs ... continual windows errors causing reboots and very slow. It's done alright though at about 9 years old.

Biting the bullet and looking at new PCs. What I want to know is what I should do about the existing MS Office suite? I have the Academic version of Office installed ... 2007 version which of course was running under Win7. When I buy a new Win10 PC am I able to install the old version of Office on the new PC or is a much more sensible option to again bite the bullet and fork out for Office 365? I really only need Excel and Word.

Any other advice about what traps to avoid would be welcome. I used to know this stuff for work but haven't needed to for quite a few years now so I'm quite out of date. (PC is really just used for domestic stuff ... not gaming)

Oh, the actual copying of my files from old to new should be easy as it's all under one folder and I have a copy on an external hard drive too.

I can still run my MSDN version of Office 2000 on windows 10. If it throws issues at you, as these things can sometimes, there are settings that will allow you to open Word or Excel in a way that it mimics win7. Tis about the simplest description I can think of. But you shoud have no issues. Just make sure you have the license key lol.

[Hoonicorn]

Office 365 has the same look as Windows 10 so if the aesthetic matters to you, get Office 365, but you can still use 2007. If you don't need all the features, you can use the free versions of Word and Excel Online. https://products.office.com/en/office-online/

[Oakie]

So we've just loaded Office 2007 onto Mrs Oakie's Win10 laptop and that seemed to go OK. Whew.

Now to decide :
> laptop vs PC
> if PC, standalone or mini-tower
> i3 or AMD equiv
> graphics card? (probably not required)

Google ... where are you?

[TheDemonLord]

So we've just loaded Office 2007 onto Mrs Oakie's Win10 laptop and that seemed to go OK. Whew.

Now to decide :
> laptop vs PC
> if PC, standalone or mini-tower
> i3 or AMD equiv
> graphics card? (probably not required)

Google ... where are you?

Laptop: Only worth it (IMO) if Portability is required - such as going to/from a place of work, or taking into the bedroom to watch Netflix, otherwise you are paying for functionality that you don't use and a PC with the same specced components will always outperform a lappie.
PC: Do you mean an all-in-one vs Mini-Tower? If so, my preference is for Mini-Towers, better cooling, can upgrade components - however if Form/space/clutter is a key factor, then All-in-One is probably best
I3: I'm an Intel Fan boy when it comes to CPUs - i3 or i5.
Graphics: Some form of Graphics card (or onboard graphics chipset) isn't a bad idea in this day and age - especially if you want to watch Blu-Ray or Stream in High Def - with a GPU, the PC will offload the graphics rendering to the card, whereas without one, it's all done by the CPU, which can result in slow downs (although, to be fair, not so much an issue these days, although might be an issue when 8K becomes more common)

[HenryDorsetCase]

Laptop: Only worth it (IMO) if Portability is required - such as going to/from a place of work, or taking into the bedroom to watch Netflix, otherwise you are paying for functionality that you don't use and a PC with the same specced components will always outperform a lappie.
PC: Do you mean an all-in-one vs Mini-Tower? If so, my preference is for Mini-Towers, better cooling, can upgrade components - however if Form/space/clutter is a key factor, then All-in-One is probably best
I3: I'm an Intel Fan boy when it comes to CPUs - i3 or i5.
Graphics: Some form of Graphics card (or onboard graphics chipset) isn't a bad idea in this day and age - especially if you want to watch Blu-Ray or Stream in High Def - with a GPU, the PC will offload the graphics rendering to the card, whereas without one, it's all done by the CPU, which can result in slow downs (although, to be fair, not so much an issue these days, although might be an issue when 8K becomes more common)

FWIW at work we are replacing all the "big boxes" with NUC's since we run a fully hosted remote access system. The staff get back desk top real estate which they can cover with used coffee cups and plates and cups and occasionally files. The biggest bang for buck improvement has been getting people 28 inch monitors or two 24's depending on preference.

At home we have an aging desktop, an NUC but most of our browsing is done on a tablet... with some of the tablets you can bluetooth a keyboard and maybe a big monitor and for light duty use it as a PC - one of my workmates does that with an iPood (a Pro I think).

[Oakie]

Something I hadn't considered with the 'all in one' machines is that if your monitor shits itself, you may be up for a whole new PC.

[TheDemonLord]

FWIW at work we are replacing all the "big boxes" with NUC's since we run a fully hosted remote access system. The staff get back desk top real estate which they can cover with used coffee cups and plates and cups and occasionally files. The biggest bang for buck improvement has been getting people 28 inch monitors or two 24's depending on preference.

At home we have an aging desktop, an NUC but most of our browsing is done on a tablet... with some of the tablets you can bluetooth a keyboard and maybe a big monitor and for light duty use it as a PC - one of my workmates does that with an iPood (a Pro I think).

^^^ solid advice - if you aren't doing any grunt work locally, then that's a perfect solution.

[Oakie]

This
https://www.noelleeming.co.nz/shop/c...rod164861.html

I know the standard is pretty much 8gb RAM nowdays but this one has 4gb DDR4 RAM and 16gb Optane system accelerator. Comments? Better just to go the straight 8 gb RAM? (This optane is a new one on me).

[TheDemonLord]

This
https://www.noelleeming.co.nz/shop/c...rod164861.html

I know the standard is pretty much 8gb RAM nowdays but this one has 4gb DDR4 RAM and 16gb Optane system accelerator. Comments? Better just to go the straight 8 gb RAM? (This optane is a new one on me).

Not a bad specced PC, I'd personally want 8 Gb minimum too (but bear in mind I'm a gamer and a RAM Snob so...) - to expand however:

Optane isn't RAM, what it does is act as a very fast read/write cache for your spinning disks (Hard Drives) - in english, it makes it faster for your PC to access commonly used data that is permanently stored on the slower, traditional HDD.

16 Gb refers to the size of the cache it can hold.

[Oakie]

Not a bad specced PC, I'd personally want 8 Gb minimum too (but bear in mind I'm a gamer and a RAM Snob so...) - to expand however:

Optane isn't RAM, what it does is act as a very fast read/write cache for your spinning disks (Hard Drives) - in english, it makes it faster for your PC to access commonly used data that is permanently stored on the slower, traditional HDD.

16 Gb refers to the size of the cache it can hold.

Thanks for that. It ticked all my boxes apart from the 8GB RAM. I shall keep looking.

[TheDemonLord]

Thanks for that. It ticked all my boxes apart from the 8GB RAM. I shall keep looking.

Do they not have upgrade options? If it's got 2 RAM slots, then it is very easy to buy another stick of RAM and chuck it in.

You could take the spec to somewhere like PBtech or Playtech or similar and see if they could price up something similar (but with the correct spec)

[Oakie]

True. Just wondering about invalidating a warantee if the box is opened.

[Oakie]

Supplementary question:

Is 'Intel UHD Graphics' better than 'Radeon R4'? I know both are integrated and it doesn't look like the budget will stretch to a dedicated graphics card.

Looking at this one in particular now https://www.smithscity.co.nz/compute...f0036a-9051136

[MD]

I'm in the same boat. 10 y.o. all in one PC just for home use, simple stuff, and yesterday Microsoft send me message that they're retiring Windows 7 and they had the cheek to add that Windows 10 won't work on an old piece of junk computer like mine. Bastards I like my trusty AIO . but yeah nah it has slowed heaps over the years.

Got a tablet last year but still prefer the big screen and proper keyboard of a PC. Not interested in tower PCs. So do I spend up on a new AIO + Windows 10? Or struggle on until old faithful dies.

How the years fly. To me it wasn't that long ago that we got the state of the art AIO. Now I learn it's OLD!