Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Media Needia

Dot Nerds! Assemble!

I have a digital quandary. As you know I'm moving stateside soon and am currently sorting thru what crap to take with me. I shipped my desktop PC over from UK to Ireland last year - but to get stuff all the way to US (without knowing my address) is a different matter. I want to take nowt with me!

So, my digital needs are:
-Personal PC to download music and movies on
-Ability to view/listen to said music and movies (either on a laptop screen or thru connecting to a TV)
-Surfing inappropriate websites

I upgraded my desktop with a spanky graphics card with an HD output about 12 months ago but everything else is stock. I pondered taking this to the PC store and asking them to re-fit it all into a smaller case, along with a RAM upgrade, BluRay Player and perhaps a 1TB hard drive and windows 7 - but that might be expensive for what is now a 3+ yr old motherboard and CPU based system.
I would like portability - as this thing has to go to US and god knows where after that. I pondered MCE laptops or just a new laptop with a TV Tuner but am hesitant about the results (and costs).
Finally, I found this article which seemed to address my problem. However, it basically requires throwing away my existing PC (with spanky graphics card).

I'm confused and lost in the digital wilderness and need advice - please, lord of the nerds, come to my rescue and advise me....

3 comments:

  1. I've become a big fan of laptops as primary machines... so my first inclination is to say get a laptop (is your old viao up to snuff?). Maybe a ram / hdd upgrade on your old laptop will suffice?

    The other thing that's crossing my mind is selling all your old equipment and keeping the hard-disk which you could throw into a new "bare-bones" system.

    Dell always has crazy cheap desktops, so maybe you could just sell everything except the hard disk... then get a new pc and swap out the primary boot drive for your older drive. Windows 7 is just around the corner so you may want to consider waiting to get new hardware to go along with the new OS (even though windows 7 works good on older hardware or so I've heard).

    Personally I've been intrigued by the netbook craze... 80% of what I do at home can be accomplished on something that costs $350... ooooh yea there are also a ton of new "ultralights" coming out which have 13" screens and are as thin as a macbook air but run about $800... insane!

    Here's one by asus

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  2. Yeah - baring in mind i need portability and perhaps won't have a TV a laptop makes sense. My old Viao is still around - and would definitely need a RAM upgrade if possible (plus a new battery). Bascially i need to decide if i'm shipping my desktop to US and upgrading it or throwing the whole thing in the bin and going portable with a laptop.

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  3. I got heather one of the ultra light viao's for Christmas last year and it has been a great computer. Service is great too the monitor went out I sent it in and within 3 days had d new screen on the laptop and had it back in my possession. And I normally hate Sony product because all of the proprietary b.s. they do.

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