Dithering over

It'll be OK until you want to do wireless networking or play a DivX movie.

I'll fix that. I know my wireless card works with it, and I'm going to get Automatix or whatever it's called. Anyway, it's better than "It'll be OK until WGA starts playing up or you've had it installed for more than 12 months".

I have a genuine Vista here and I'm pondering over whether I should upgrade from XP :-).

I feel as though I'm not making full use of my new Core2Duo with normal XP. I'm right in saying these CPUs are 64bit as well aren't I?

I've been running it since release.

Don't make the mistake of thinking that 64bits = more speed than 32 bit.

But a 16 bit SNES was better than an 8 bit NES.

Yeah, but SNES has the word 'Super' in it, NES doesn't. It's obviously going to be better ;)

It'll be fine, I've not had any problems with it (on a wireless laptop). Never tried to play a divx file though - maybe VLC will just play it.

The only downside I've had is that there's no adobe shockwave for the web browser. That's all.

VLC plays DIVX files here no problem.

I'm sure I got round that on various Linux distros by installing Firefox or Mozilla of some flavour. ICBW though.

Automatix seems to be slightly frowned on these days - you get a lot of the stuff as part of the distribution now (that you didn't when automatix first came about - for example DVD codecs are often installed automatically when you first try and play a DVD).

Automatix apparently causes problems when trying to update Ubuntu later on...

And what's this got to do with cars anyway? I don't know, I join a new group because I'm getting the urge to tweak my Mondeo (don't laugh) and find you're all talking about PCs. That's daft, that is ;-)

Although having said that, Megasquirt is one of the things I have an urge to try and play with..

Ubuntu, good. Dell, load of s**te.

I'm currently running Ubuntu, XP and Mac OS X on this machine.

Dithering may well be over. Plus selected other graphics effects.

I know ubuntu's fine. I used debian years ago, and RH and SuSE before that. And I like to set up PCs for your completely clueless running Debian or (more lately) Ubuntu as it's simple to use and far less prone to random breakage and message spouting than Windows.

Aye.

I knew that bit.

Why? IMO the hardware of theirs that I've seen has always been pretty good, bar the downside of strange power supply connectors etc. I've not been overly impressed by tales of their customer service, but barring hardware failure, I doubt I'll ever be ringing them up.

Bah. Look. I want a computer for my filth, my music, films and telly, and calling people wankers on here, with the minimum of fuss. Occasionally I may actually type the odd useful thing on it too, but that's a bit less common, and I know it'll work with an LJ5 happily. Fuck. Do new computers have parallel ports?

Bah.

I vaguely regularly ask on here what would be a good basic PC. Hence the dithering over title.

Wireless is hit and miss, WPA-PSK doesn't work so you will ned to use WEP - the lowest of all security which can be cracked in minutes. Just wait until you try getting a virus scanner or attempting to use the equivalent of Limewire and UPNP. The firewall rules are a nightmare, you need to know what you're doing and most programs will require port forwarding and not UPNP as that doesn't work between Ubuntu and any router. Your PC will need a static IP rather than a dynamic one too. There are lots of differences. I had ubuntu running and although it uses far less resources than Vista Premium and does the same for free with a program called Beryl, I got shut of it. There are no decent art packages, burning DVDs and CDs was hit and miss and updates kept coming out all the time. Ubuntu is good to revive an old PC, but best avoided on a nice new one. Get yourself a pirated copy of Vista Premium. For what you have probably saved, and the trouble you will have with incompatibility - you shouldn't have thought twice or did a bit of reading up on it. Try getting 5.1 or 7.1 surround sound, you're stuck with 2 channel audio. Throw the multimedia keyboard, optical mouse, Television card, video capture cards all in the bin - none will really work.

Ubuntu leaves a lot to be desired. Until the final release comes out and the developers keep up to the standards of XP/Vista I would leave it.

I can't think of a worse combination - Ubuntu on a DELL ! Christ!

Well you might be in for a shock. There is no program I know of that works with Ubuntu to securely delete files in order to stop them being detected during a forensic exam of a computer! Many programs make claims, not many work. With Windows it's easy to destroy files completely to stop them being recovered with EnCase, but you can't on Ubuntu. You better watch what you're storing on the drive.

Out of 100 I had delivered, 5 motherboards were faulty, 2 monitors were not working, then within 2 months various hardware failures such as hard drives but only 1 power supply. The Optiplex ones had a fault with the two speed fan system for cooling. The temperature detection circuit or software driving it always went funny. The units were of poor build quality with everything jammed in to a tiny case which caused overheating and fans staying on full - which caused vibrations through desks. If you just want a PC to take out the box and use then they are OK. They are no good for continual heavy home use and are rubbish and unreliable for business use. The only decent thing is the LCD monitors!

They substitute cheap components for the ones ordered, and then offer small "refunds" when the customers complain. However said refund means the package still costs more than similar kit from other makers and the kit shipped remains not what was ordered.

Reliability sucks.

Tech support from India and if you have a problems they string you along for months then tell you that your PC is now out of warranty.

Computers from Dell always feel slow, I don't know why. But suspect it is related to the "swap components for cheap substitutes" and "ship lower spec than advertised" problems.

Laptops a particularly bad joke, badly built, badly specced, vile screens.

What has that got to do with parallel ports? I really couldn't give a f*ck about secure delete. I don't put things on my PC that give me the fear...