AZS2KDancer

It's not kids that are the problem, it's Windows. Now, if I could get my Mac Mail to work right...

I get it, it's all computers.

dlq04

Lainey, my lips are sealed. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Good you solved it.

Lainey

You buy, I'll fly (right to that Mac store), Dave.

Morris

I'm planning on buying a computer, for home, on Thanksgiving day. (better than Black Friday I hear) I want to be able to run some games (Flight Simulator for one, which is a memory hog), so a video card would be important. I have had good luck with Dell. But if others (Murphy?) have suggestions I'd like to hear them. If you can be specific on the model number besides the brand (even with Dell) I would appreciate it. Apple is too expensive, so you can skip that. But other brands I have never owned so have no experience with. Oh except a D.E.C. mini computer purchased in the early 80s for about $65,000, but let's not go there.....

Ryuu

Acer and Dell are the two companies my clients seem to favor, they pick usually a general system, then they upgrade the video card..

figure about 1 gig of memory on a video card per monitor, preferred 2 gig, the video card will use it all and then demand system ram memory and or hard drive pseudo memory and this is usually where ones lag generates..

if I were building a flight sim pc, I would use 8 gigs ram, a 256bit 2 gig or 4 gig video card an SSD hard drive.. ( the standard HD is where the slow memory exchange occurs.. an SSD, eliminates that )

my own pc is 16 gigs ram, 2 4 gig 256bit video cards and an SSD hard drive.. it almost has no lag time... this noted, my video set, still has a demand for up to more 8 gigs of my onboard ram... though I haven't seen it use it yet... I do play some very memory intensive software... usually video editing.. MS flight sim isn't really that demanding, of the demanding games.. many of the fighter games halo, duke nukem... stuff like that, much more demanding..

ralper

Lainey,

Are the problems resolved? Did you upgrade to 8.1?

Lainey

I thought the woes were resolved, but turned on the computer tonight. It could not find a network, I was getting odd error messages. So I called HP. I was pleasantly surprised by their customer service and assistance. I did restart my modem (duh, disconnected my phone) but call back wasn't an issue. She looked around at processes, programs, all seems well

Not sure of the original problem or why I had an issue today when I thought all was well last night, but hopefully it's all set now.

That darn Ask toolbar had made it's way in, that could have been part of the problem too.

Hopefully, no gremlins will show up tomorrow.

She does have 8.1 on the computer. I still have to say it would take me a while to navigate anything behind the scenes on Windows 8.

Thanks for asking!

RMurphy

It doesn't really work that way. For instance, I could say "get a Precision T1700" (I *wouldn't* say that, but just run with this a few moments for sake of example), but then you would go to the Dell site and find out that a T1700 can be configured in two different form factors, with several different processors ranging from a 4th gen I3-4xxx to a v3 Xeon E3-1271, and probably four or five different video cards. Model number means very little. If you look back in this forum about 6 months ago or so, someone was discussing their newly acquired Dell <insert model number here> and someone else responded with a $$ figure asking why they spent so much. Someone else responded with a comment about how they found "it" for several hundred dollars or so less. And still someone else chimed in with another figure. And they were all *correct.* What was not readily understood in that discussion was that the model number is just what sits on the outside of the box. I have a Dell Precision T3500. That means nothing unless I tell you which processor, video card, and how much RAM I got. Heck, chances are there were a few different types of motherboards which they used in this chassis too, so I'm not even factoring that in either. I don't even remember at this point seeing as it was 5 years ago when I spec'd it. Running like a train --well, perhaps a mildly asthmatic train more recently, but still in the train family. (damn... I just jinxed it, didn't I?)

What you want to do is decide how much you want to spend, then find someone who is a gamer and ask their input after giving them very specific information on the games you plan to run and however else you plan to use the machine. I do business systems for the typical office -- no heavy graphics, no gaming. I spec tried and true daily-use machines that need to just run like trains. They don't game, they aren't blindingly fast, they don't do ultra-zoomy stuff. They just run -- efficiently and reliably. Like a Corolla, a Civic, a Camry, or an Accord. And they always have minimum three year Pro level warranties so when a part breaks, I can get it next day for the client with very little muss or fuss. I spec for up-time and productivity.

If I may be so bold (apologies in advance, iosh), I think the guy you want to talk to who frequents this forum is Marioshi. He's a PC enthusiast/hobbyiest who games, but still speaks a language which the non-enthusiast population (this includes me) can comprehend.

Ryuu had some sound advice on your request as well.

AZS2KDancer

I'd like a computer that's like an S2000.

RMurphy

Lainey:

The Ask toolbar is most commonly installed by users when Java is updated/installed on a PC. The installer should *uncheck* the boxes which offer to install the Ask Search App. It's not unusual that people assume if a box is checked by default that they should leave it checked. It is time consuming, but you have to read all of the stuff with checkboxes or radio buttons next to them. Sometimes the "next" button is asking to install something totally different from what you are really wanting to install. Sometimes clicking cancel is the correct answer.

Comodo browser is a free web browser available standalone or as part of the Comodo Security suite. It may have come preinstalled on the laptop or downloaded/installed unintentionally when updating some other free program on the machine during configuration.

The most common cause, aside from malware, for unexpected oddball behavior from PCs which cause strange blinking screens or pieces of hardware which formerly worked fine to suddenly stop working (wifi card, for example) are updates from Microsoft which alter device drivers. Patch Tuesday is the second Tuesday of the month (although it isn't unusual for major security updates to be pushed in between). I get the most calls about odd behavior or blue screens within a few days after Patch Tuesday. There is no way for me to say definitively one way or the other if that is what has occurred with your granddaughter's laptop, but one of the questions I would ask is if the machine was in use at all since the 11th. If it hadn't been, that could easily be a culprit. It's a matter of asking a lot of questions to try to narrow down the potential causes. On my own machines, I have automatic updates set to download, but not install until I tell them to. This way I can make sure my backups are current, that I'm not on a deadline, and that I have a recent good restore point available to me. I also wait a few days because there have been instances where patches have been pulled within a few days after being released. I say let others deal with the problems and be the guinea pigs while I continue to work. I'll run it after I know it's good. I have very few problems on major name machines (Dell Optiplex line, for instance) with incompatibilities with Windows updates than most retail devices. For instance, Sony Vaios... those things broke with every other windows update because they had so much proprietary hardware in them. I stopped supporting them because they were ridiculous headaches. Ugh. Wonderful machines so long as you never applied an update.

I'm not a fan of Norton/Symantec anything, just as an aside. It is frequently a cause for problems on PCs. Not that McAfee is much better, although I have had fewer issues in more recent years. I used to like AVG until it turned into a giant resource hog with memory leaks which leveled a few machines I supported (including one of my own). So I stopped recommending that too. LOL. Most security suite programs are just varying degrees of suck. Choose the least sucky and go from there. Regardless of what anyone says, you must have some form of antivirus/anti-malware on your machine or you are just asking for trouble. And that is regardless of OS. Macs are not immune, nor are Androids, etc.

I kind of wish I had a niece nearby that I could teach these things to. I was listening to an NPR program recently about why women stopped entering the field of Computer Science. Seems like numbers for women entering the field dropped like a stone in 1984. The program posed some rather interesting possible explanations for this and what a few universities have done to address the issue. One of the things it mentioned is that young girls are rarely encouraged to work on and learn about what makes computers function. They rarely have someone who takes them aside like young men who work on their cars with their dads do, that sort of thing. It would be nice to pass on to someone of the female gender that working on computers can be a very cool and rewarding activity. Maybe this is a terrible idea, but Lainey, maybe you could involve your granddaughter instead of just doing it for her? Not only would the computer be a cool gift, but the learning experience might be a gift that pays her dividends down the road. Just a thought...