Thread: Need non-gaming PC

Fellow hardware nerds,

My uncle needs a home PC, Windows 7 and MS Office.

He prefers using a Mac, and owns two, but coaches track/cross-country at a college that communicates with MS documents. He has an old PC (running XP), but needs to upgrade.

He doesn't need a monitor.

He doesn't play games, so he doesn't need video that can lift a lot of polygons. That said, I've seen plenty of PCs that have shitty 2D and desktop performance, and I want him to have something that works well. For example, it should be able to accept a streaming 1080p video and decode it without stuttering.

He has no patience for the technical side of things. It should just work. When things don't work, he's not interested in fixing it.

The two paths are:

(1) I build him a machine. I build my own (and run Gnu/Linux), but the last time I built one was two years ago and that was higher-end hardware. My sense is that you can save money building your own high-end machine, but that advantage diminishes as you go for cheaper hardware. I'd need advice on components to build a good, but less expensive, machine.

(2) I direct him to a pre-built machine. Because of who he is, he'd be happiest buying online or picking something up at BestBuy. There was a time when you could buy a Dell (or whatever) and wind up with something decent, but I've seen some amazingly shitty machines recently and have no clue who makes PCs that don't suck. For example, it has to NOT be loaded with crappy or nagging software. It'd also be nice if the power supply didn't shit itself in 6 months.

Thoughts?

Edit: more info...

- Pretty sure his monitor runs 1920x1080 native.
- Needs WiFi ethernet.

Cheers,


AetheLove

Office for Mac : Simplify Your Work | Office For Mac

Asus makes some PCs that they'll have at Best Buy. My dad went with a gateway (I know, I know), but it's actually worked well so far. Any of those come with bloatware. You'll probably want to go in and clean it up (take off the AV and install MSE). If he's not local, you could always just remote in.

Honestly, if his Macs are running just fine, then I would just have him get the Mac edition of Office. No need to get a new computer if all he's looking for is Office and if his Macs run fine.

I'll try to get something cheap together.

I have had many Dells in the past, and currently have a Dell laptop. I am no expert PC builder, but it does seem to me that the lower you go on the price point the less you save by doing it yourself. The other good thing with a Dell is if something screws up you can Ctrl F11, and easily, but usually not quickly, get back to factory settings. The bad thing is like all main stream PC makers there is bloatware.

Under $700
-Quiet and cool
-SSD for OS (I have 2 of them in my rig, 1 for Eve and 1 for my linux distro)
-should be able to run 1080p with Intel graphics
-He should be able to get a copy of Windows through his school if they have any type of deal with MS. My mom does this. At the very least, he should be able to get discounted and Office discounted.
-Small
-might need a cable for the monitor
-very power efficient, PSU can handle a GPU easily. Although, for his needs, I don't think he needs one.

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Originally Posted by CivilWars

I have had many Dells in the past, and currently have a Dell laptop. I am no expert PC builder, but it does seem to me that the lower you go on the price point the less you save by doing it yourself. The other good thing with a Dell is if something screws up you can Ctrl F11, and easily, but usually not quickly, get back to factory settings. The bad thing is like all main stream PC makers there is bloatware.

Yeah, Dells suck generally speaking, but their warranties are good. Although, Aeth, you'll want to handle calling tech support for him. Their tech support agents suck.

Bloatware is easy to manage with CCleaner (the free version).

For wireless, he won't even notice it. Just the tip as Archer would say.
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Most of my coworkers are on Mac, and I am on PC. We use Google Docs for virtually everything, but some things we have to DL as Excel/Word. It is rare, and nothing deal breaking, but there are some conflicts. Some of the ones I know of off of the top of my head is if they lock a document nobody on a PC can unlock it. Also color formatting messes up for some reason on Excel spreadsheets. I am sure there are other "inconveniences", but I am not aware of anything that would make a document/spreadsheet unusable by going cross platform.

Originally Posted by AetheLove

Good points.

My initial thought was to use BootCamp and install Win7 - but that's too much trouble for him. He'd much rather have two machines, and just sit down at whichever OS he needs.

Second thought was MSOffice for Mac, but this would have to work seemlessly. I mean, if he ever emailed a document out to his team, and any of them emailed back with "I can't open it", that'd be a total fail. Even if it wasn't the Mac/PC format thing, that'd be the first place anyone would try to put the blame. He's lived with compatibility issues for a long time - in his closet is a Mac SE (yes, it still runs) - and that's what pushed him years ago to just get a Windows PC too. If someone out there can tell me that the Mac/PC file formats are truly interchangeable, I'll be happy to suggest that.

Third thought was that he should move his documents online and use web-based applications. That'd let him forget about OS and format issues completely. Also, he'd be able to move past the internet of 1999 when everyone thought "email attachments" were a cool thing. I'm guessing a lot of his athletes find downloading MSOffice email attachments to be inconvenient.

So, in the big picture, I may want to try and drag him kicking-and-screaming into the 21st century. But for now I think we're going to let him spend a few hundred dollars and be comfortable with the world he knows.

Cheers,


AetheLove

It'll use the same format for files, Windows or Mac. So, that's not a problem.

As far as say, Google Docs goes. That might be a bit much especially as he would have to worry about conversion issues going from .docx to .doc, which can result in some formatting issues. He would also have to deal with extra dialogue boxes converting, and his coworkers may run into a problem of using his documents. There are less issues converting than with Open Office, but they are still there.

Something he could do for his athletes is to set up a Drop Box folder and invite all of the athletes. I've had several professors do that. It lets him put and update files in real time. Any unwanted revisions can be reverted, and past file versions can be accessed at any time. He'll also get a bonus to his free account storage size by inviting his students to use Drop Box.