[TonyTurley]

It's all commodity parts these days.

Thanks Boris. They did come to mind.

[OregonJim]

am I better off just shopping around, sourcing each item a la carte from different companies

If you want high-end or specialty components, then yes. I'm not aware of any one-stop shop for this kind of thing .

Otherwise, as boriscleto says, it's all commodity stuff.

[NicoleC]

Here's a question: where could I get the best components for assembling my own PC? I used to buy stuff from TigerDirect, but had an issue with their service last year, and won't be going back to them. I'm thinking a better PS, MB + CPU, graphics card, and a HD of at least 1TB capacity. Or am I better off just shopping around, sourcing each item a la carte from different companies? The technical aspects of assembling a PC are easy; I just don't know who the best suppliers are, and I want to avoid mass market consumer-grade stuff as much as possible. As I said, my current PC is 8 years old, and I'd like to put one together that will last a long time.

Newegg is a great source. Very reputable with good prices.

[KevinR]

The Dell drive in my computer is actually branded for Dell. .... I was under the impression it was a strictly proprietary drive and that it was likely to cause problems if I used anything else......

As OregonJim has already pointed out, Dell buy from others and stick their label on it. In some cases, they sell complete junk imho. If Dell created the impression that you should strict strictly to propietary drives, then they are being seriously disingenuous. An SATA drive should work on any SATA port (obviously version dependent). That is the point of a compatability standard. Otherwise it is not SATA...period.

.... I'm not too impressed with Dell actually.. Other than the audio which is on the main board and the main board I've literally replaced 85% of it at this point and this computer isn't but 5 years old. ....

.... Dell quality has been all over the map since the day the company was founded. The quality is entirely dependant on who their volume purchasers bought from that year.....

OreginJim again hits the nail on the head. I work for a large group that has a central policy dictate to buy Dell. So I have been exposed to about 12yrs of Dell hardware on my desk and also thoughout my department and the rest of a 200 plus people division. Quality is very erratic. Sometimes fantastic that I almost didn't want to upgrade a particular laptop because I didn't have a days problems, and then we hit a defect rate of about 1 to 2 in every 10 that have major issues (blue screens/hardware failures). At one stage we bought lots of desktops only to discovery later that they had non-standard expansion slots (low profile) and hence we couldn't buy industry standard expansion cards, so all our CAD graphics cards became redundent until we bought a new batch of specials with normal cases and form-factors.

Where we require desktops now at work for special apps and software, we have taken to specifying as many compentents individually to get around the quality variation issues. This seems to help.

[magkelly]

This thing just saved my cute little arse. It made my life a heck of a lot easier. I could not get my original drive to boot at all though I did manage to finally run a chkdisk on it from a command prompt that took forever. I don't have as second sata connection on my motherboard and I'm not too up on the ins and outs of Sata drives, SATA slave drives, jumpers, etc, so I spent the $20 on this hoping it would read the bad drive so I could recover my files and transfer them to a backup external USB HD. I popped the new one in, loaded up Win 7 Pro, and plugged in both the drive and this reader. Bingo! So far, mostly so good. I have run into a couple of files that I could not copy but I've gotten most of my data and files off the old drive and onto the new ones. This is a lot easier way of doing it than it used to be. It's made my migration almost painless, though not that quick. I've been working literally since about noon now, setting Windows up and transferring it all. Oh, but I did manage to lost two MORE components today. I'll need a new USB hub as of tomorrow. Loki killed that and the ergo keyboard when he jumped up on the desk and dumped my Coke all over the place. Mr Nosy just could not stay away from all the interesting stuff going on at my desk or refrain from bugging the girl cat while I worked. The 4 footed wrecking crew strikes again, sigh. I had a backup keyboard, fortunately, but the USB hub, alas, is history....

Amazon.com: Cable Matters SuperSpeed USB 3.0/2.0 to 2.5"/3.5" SATA Hard Drive Docking Station - Supports 3TB+ Hard Drives: Computers & Accessories

[ChrisPlatt]

I'm setting up a little netbook to use with my new Pakon scanner.
I had some major problems doing a fresh install of Windows XP.
Despite Samsung's rotten product support I managed to get everything working.
I'm now spending this beautiful Sunday afternoon downloading updates...

Chris

[magkelly]

Careful with those Windows updates. One of them just about killed my new Win 7 install this morning. I had to roll back to yesterday using system restore. Apparently one of them caused my system to go "Ugh, patooey!"

[TonyTurley]

Yup, I had a set of Win XP updates wipe out my USB drivers. The mouse and keyboard worked perfectly in bootup, then quit working the instant the Windows kernel loaded. Tried all sorts of "fixes" I read about on the webs, but nothing worked. Booted to a Linux rescue disk, and everything magically worked fine again. Installed Linux in a separate partition, and worked that way for a while. Never really missed Win, so I backed up all of my files to a USB HD, and installed the latest version of Ubuntu, repartitioning the whole drive into one Linux partition. Runs like a champ, has all the photo editing software I need, free from the Ubuntu repositories. Don't miss Win a bit, although the IT empire at work forces us to use Win 7 and Active Directory. With all of the corporate bloatware running in the background, our PCs are slow as snails.

[magkelly]

About a week after I posted this Microsoft admitted there was a problem with a particular update and they pulled it. But FYI, that update installed itself again completely without my permission. After the first set of updates nearly killed my new Windows install and I had to use System Restore to get it back I had Windows updates set to "notify me about new updates but don't download and install without permission" and yet somehow it still did. The updates, including that one they just downloaded, despite my setting it to "wait and let me choose" mode, and then started to install again completely sans any permission from me.

I was stunned and I found myself right back where I was using system restore for the SECOND time to get my computer back. After that I just turned off Windows update completely and updated my video drivers and that manually instead. I truly hate the whole automatic updates thing. I realize sometimes the security patches are necessary but sometimes they're more trouble than they are worth. I didn't realize that unless you turned the thing completely OFF that they could still install stuff sans permission even if you checked just "notify me etc" first. That's the first time I've had the updater do that override my personal choice and I was not too happy about realizing that they could.

I'm mostly back to normal now. Got 90% of my favorite programs back on. Most of my favorite games too, though I was very annoyed at losing 2 years worth of Cubis. Out of 120 levels I had gotten 3 stars on all of them and I only had like 12 levels to go in terms of getting all "perfects" and I am not happy that I now have to play it all over again. Some of those levels were a total bi- to get "perfect" on, lol. So far I'm back to having 3 stars on all of them and I've got about half the levels back to "perfect" but that's it so far. I'm going to keep at it though. I'm determined to beat that addictive little game completely one of these days...

[ChrisPlatt]

We have two desktops and three laptops receiving Microsoft automatic updates for Windows 7
and all have continued to work fine.

Chris

[magkelly]

Some people were okay, but a lot of people crashed big time. Enough that Microsoft went "Oops!" anyway and it hit the news sites...

[clackers]

We have two desktops and three laptops receiving Microsoft automatic updates for Windows 7
and all have continued to work fine.

Chris

I think one of the problem scenarios was third party OTF fonts installed somewhere other than the fonts folder. That was probably not your situation.

[ChrisPlatt]

If that's the case then kudos to Microsoft for straightening out the problem.
They're really not responsible for compatibility issues with third-party add ons.

Chris

[BirdDude007]

I have been using a laptop as my main computer for the last five years, its an HP I bought at Sams Club over five years ago, this laptop has worked awesome over all that time. I learned to just have a couple of external HDs for all my storage needs and basically have backups on each one, mostly my photos and important data.
just last weekend I purchased another HP from Sams club but this time it is a desktop PC from HP, Intel i7-4770 3.40 GHZ, 1TB HD, 12 GIG RAM, 27" monitor, I just love this thing, Ya I had Photoshop and Lightroom running on the laptop but PP took forever with that old dual core in it, I would move a slider on my RAW image in LR and it would take about ten seconds to render the change, God forbid I use the spot healing in LR, it would just freeze LR up. Now with the new set up when I use any slider in LR on my RAW images, the changes are immediate, they change as I slide the sliders, I just love it!. And when using the spot healing adjustments it also works blindingly fast, My post processing has taken on a whole new level, I no longer feel like my hands are tied when it comes to my computer.
I will be cleaning out my old laptop and basically setting it up for use out in the field and or a backup, I ,most likely will not sell it anytime soon.
Having the backup external drives with all my info and images on them has really helped the change over to the new computer, I loaded up LR and PS on the new computer and just showed them where to go for the catalogs, it was that easy.

[magkelly]

I got rid of the one older laptop I had because I inherited one from someone who upgraded. I practically gave it away in the end. The way tablets have taken off trying to sell a lower end laptop is really hard. If it's within a year old and souped up like a gamer's laptop people will still bite, but anything that's not quad core, that doesn't have a 1 TB drive and tons of memory? Good luck selling it. You might as well keep it or donate it and take the tax credit.

I've got a cheapie 10 inch Chinese tablet now. I thought about just dumping the laptop but then this snafu happened and I tried using my tablet as a main PC for a few hours and it just did not work at all for me. It's one thing to do a quick bit of browsing on that thing to look up something maybe and another completely to actually surf the web for an hour or so, get my mail etc. As a book reader it's fine. To play a few easy games on it, it's fine. I can even use it for clients to show them slideshow of my work, but for internet use it's just too small for me. Even a 10" tablet it's just too small for my eyes to go online much. The laptop is too now though. I had it hooked up to the 27" monitor while I was using it.

Apple will be coming out with a 13" tablet soon. I'm supposing a lot of Chinese clones will happen shortly after and I'll eventually grab me one. I wish I could afford one of those really thin hybrid laptops that are half tablet half laptop with a bigger screen but they're just a bit too expensive for my wallet. It would be nice though. I could dump the laptop completely then and still have the benefits of both for traveling. Even the big tablets they lack a bit in muscle. It's hard to run anything like Photoshop on one. Some of the hybrids are a bit better but they have a price tag that's accordingly high. Eventually I'd love to have like a 16" or 17" tablet/laptop hybrid with a really decent processor, memory etc that doesn't weigh a ton so I could just detach the screen and go when I wanted and still be able to use it back in my hotel room with a keyboard and mouse if I wanted to. Best of both worlds, but right now I'd be spending 2 K for the privilege and it's just not worth that to me...