Hello

[Howardtay]

Hi everyone,

My old PC died a few weeks ago, so I have ordered the specification below.

I have removed the 3 Hard drives from my old PC 1 x Windows XP Pro 32bit 160Gb, 1 x Data drive 250Gb and 1 x Music Drive 80Gb and a newish NEC 3550a DVD-RW Drive I'm hoping that I can install these drives into my new PC so that it will become a Dual Boot (I don't like partitioned drives in case the whole drive fails) I would be more than interested to hear any comments or suggestions (PC is currently in the pre-production stage) that other forum members have regarding my spec.

I'm a pentioner (I took early retirement at 61) so I have a limited amount to spend on this new PC, although I did consider an i7-950 Core processor rather than i7-870 but I want to use it for Video Editing (Pinnacle Studio 11 Ultimate) and for games like Microsoft FSX, The Witcher and Tomb Raider and my budget wouldn't allow for the upgrade, so any suggests or comments?

Case
STYLISH PIANO BLACK ENIGMA CASE + 2 FRONT USB
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i7-870 Quad Core (2.93GHz, 8MB Cache) + Turbo Boost
Motherboard
ASUS® P7H55-M/USB3: MICRO ATX MAINBOARD,USB 3.0 & SATA 6.0Gb/s
Memory (RAM)
4GB SAMSUNG DDR3 DUAL-DDR3 1333MHz (2 X 2GB)
Graphics Card
1GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GT440 - DVI,HDMI,VGA - DirectX® 11
Memory - 1st Hard Disk
500GB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD5002AALX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 32MB CACHE (7200rpm)
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Power Supply
450W Quiet 80 PLUS Dual Rail PSU + 120mm Case Fan (£29)
Processor Cooling
SUPER QUIET 22dBA TRIPLE COPPER HEATPIPE CPU COOLER (£19)
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Facilities
ONBOARD 10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT - AS STANDARD ON ALL PCs
USB Options
6 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL (MIN 2 FRONT PORTS) AS STANDARD
Firewire & Video Editing
3 Port IEEE 1394a Firewire PCI Card (£9)
Operating System
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence (£79)
Office Software
NO OFFICE SOFTWARE
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Monitor
IIYAMA E2271HDS 22" LED WIDESCREEN, HDMI/DVI-D HD 1920x1080 (£139)
DVI-D & HDMI Monitor Cables
1 x 2 METRE GOLD PLATED V1.4 HDMI CABLE (£8)
Mouse
Black Logitech® Optical Wheel Mouse USB (£5)
Warranty
3 Year Standard Warranty (1 Month Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 11 to 13 working days

Price: £881.28 including VAT and delivery.

 

[Gorman]

I like the spec, looks solid to me.

About your existing devices, are they IDE or SATA? most modern mainboards only have one IDE connector which will allow two devices.

Your existing xp install will most likely freak out and blue screen if you try and boot it in the new machine, XP* is not as good as more modern operating systems with sudden major hardware changes, you will most likely have to reinstall XP on the drive when it is in the new machine. Then install 7 onto a seperate drive and you will be able to get dual boot.

Personally i would recommend ditching the dual boot and running any XP only programs (not games or more to the point DirectX apps, they dont do so well) in XP mode which is availiable with the Pro or Ultimate versions of Windows 7.

XP mode is like running a computer with XP in a window, a virtual machine.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/features/windows-xp-mode.aspx

*edit

Should also probably mention that there may be licensing issues if the install of XP is OEM and not retail.

 

[LFFPicard]

I would also recommend the silver warranty for an extra £5 as it adds 11month collect and return for extra peace of mind.

 

[Howardtay]

Hi Gorman

Thanks for the comments and suggestions, glad to hear that you think it's a solid spec, all of the drives are SATA except the DVD-RW drive of course.

I hear what you are saying about XP, but this was my boot drive on my old core2 PC so it was formated and installed as a C: drive (I have a full none OEM version of Windows XP Pro 32bit) and I don't mind re-installing XP Pro if needed as my 2nd boot drive, I also have Hardware Helper to find all the drivers for the new PC, both Windows 7 and XP. If it doesn't work first time and I decide to reformat and re-install, I can do this if required. Some of the software I have (not many though) will definately not work on Windows 7, I don't think anyone should have to re-purchase their software each time Microsoft bring out a new OS, that would be really expensive for most people, I tried virtual PC way back when it first came out in the bad old Vista days and it was prone to problems, in fact some of the software that I have would not run under the virtual PC environment, it may be that it has improved since then when Windows 7 came on the scene, and therefore it may be worth considering once I have extracted all of my personal data files I need from my XP drive.

Before retiring last year, I was an IT Sales consultant at the University of Leeds, and the University hasn't made the change yet to Windows 7 and are still using XP, it takes a long time for them to change their PC Operating system as they have thousands of them so it's a bit of a logistics headache for them, but one of the technical team there told me last July that Windows 7 including virtual PC and some other aspects of Windows 7 still has a few operating problems for them, some research and medical departments are still using old devices and software for their research and development and that is one of the reasons that they did not want to take it onboard just yet, I'm sure they will eventually though, but it will be expensive and the new government has cut all University funding considerably.

So it's a bit of quandry, I have sent an email to Pcspecialists to ask them about what I want to do but as yet I have not had a reply.

Thanks for your comments though.

 

[Howardtay]

Cheers LFFPicard, I will make it so!

 

[LFFPicard]

Cheers LFFPicard, I will make it so!

That just earned you some rep Made me chuckle at work the rest of the office looking ta me funny now :/

 

[Howardtay]

Hi there

Hope I didn't offend you Jean Luc,

I'm a big Star Trek fan, so anyone called Picard or who has Picard in their screen name will always generate a valid response. I wish I had a cool name or screen name, maybe I should get it changed by deed pole, to Luke Skywalker, William T Riker or just Data maybe that would be a good idea.

Live long and prosper!

 

[LFFPicard]

hehe,

I have had this online name for almost 15years now, even sadly enough had my own Star Trek Gaming Fleet back in the day playing Starfleet Academy, Starfleet Command and Klingon Academy.. Those were the days!

 

[Howardtay]

Ah yes! I remember it well, the good old days my favourite was Elite Force (1 and II) good old Captain Janaway, will they ever get back to Earth? well YES! and then there was Klingon Honour Guard, "today is a good day to die"! ahhh the memories. They don't make games like that anymore.

 

[Howardtay]

Had a problem accessing the message inbox on my PCspecialist web page, then suddenly realised that all messages from PCspecailist would be sent to my wifes laptop and not to my temporary PC as I ordered the PC on my wifes laptop, finally managed to see the reply to my question concerning my spare hard disks and dual booting, not good though, it seems I may not have enough power (I've ordered a 450w PSU with my PC) so it may not have enough to power all of the Hard drives and they said I could have possible problems dual booting, so I need to re-think this.

I have had a think, and I have decided to do the following:- (please comment if you agree this is a better way to go)

1. Partition the 500Gb hard drive that comes with the PC into 1st 150Gb - 2nd 150Gb - 3rd 200GB partition. 1st partition Windows 7 64bit - 2nd partition Windows XP Pro 32bit - 3rd partiton for Data, I presume that these partitions should logically show up as C: D: and E: respectively?

2. Fit 1 only of my spare Hard Drives i.e the 250Gb Drive for various stuff and to compress and backup boot drives.

3. Upgrade the DDR3 RAM from 4Gb to 8Gb (Better for video editing).

4. Change the Warranty to Silver (Already done this)

5. Remove the PCI firewire card (Already amended this) the wife and I have decided to buy a new Panasonic 3MOS HiDef camcorder that uses SD cards rather than a Firewire cable.

That hopefully should do it, rather than upgrade the PSU, hope these changes don't slow down the production, I ordered this on 17/02/11 and it is still in pre-production so they haven't started building it yet.

 

[Gorman]

1. Sounds good.
2. Fair enough.
3. Ok but XP will not be able to see more than 4Gb (usually 3.2 ish)
4. Good move.
5. I think firewire has had its day.

The amendments should not affect the lead time as you say its still in pre-production.

 

[Howardtay]

Thanks Gorman, I think I'm right doing this, I understand about the 4Gb XP problem that you mentioned, I had 4Gb on my old PC but XP never saw more than 3.2Gb so XP does have some limitations with regards to the RAM, but I shall only be using XP for my old software that will not run under Windows 7 or under virtual PC within Windows 7 as mentioned before.

It looks as though Microsoft will be bringing out a new OS every 6 Years, so the next may be due out in 2013, whats betting that this new OS will not be able to run windows 7 Software? it never ends and gets more expensive each time, they may even write a cloud based OS, oh my GOD!

 

[Gorman]

Haha,

Well its not all that bad, 7 is the same as Vista really. Vista was the first real update to how the OS works since NT and the changes were long overdue. This set of fundamental changes is what causes the large XP- Vista / 7 divide with compatability, there was a similar gap between 95/98 and XP. That and an overly optimistic minimum spec of 512mb ram made Vista quite unpopular. For me it was long, long overdue.

It will be a long while yet or an architecture change like 128bit before we see such a gap in compatability again.

Looking at the big picture, XP has its 10th Birthday this year (August 24th). I would expect to see compatability problems with an OS that old just as much as i would expect XP to not be great with Windows 3.1 programs from the previous decade (92, ish).

 

[Howardtay]

I wish they would bring back Windows 3.1, it was GREAT! no registry, dead easy to use, and if you wanted to get rid of some software you simply deleted the folder that the software was stored in, now if you install software, information is written to the registry and if you decide to remove it, it leaves behind superflous information until it fills up with lots and lots of useless rubbish information and this impacts on the PCs performance so you have to buy registry cleaners are use regedit to manually delete all of the rubbish, so some old things are not better with change, theres an old English proverb, 'if it's not broke don't try and fix it'. O.K I know technology doesn't stand still, but come on! they are not writing these OS systems for ordinary people and especially not for the elder citizen of this world who just happen to have a larger disposable income than a married couple with 2.4 children.

O.K, I've had a rant, so do you think that the next Microsoft OS will be cloud based or not?

 

[LFFPicard]

The next one is rumoured to be a Gamers edition, stripped down for optimal gaming.
Then possibly a cloud orientated system, not entirely cloud but will rely on it quite a bit.

To me Vista was a waste.. Vista was to Windows 7 what Windows ME was to Windows 98 a failed attempt at squeezing out a quick OS for more money.
Look at it now, Millennium is not mentioned on any specs they all say Win 98/XP/2000/Vista/7 ME is never mentioned, it is one of those things $S wish to forget.

 

[Gorman]

No way MS would ever try to market a cloud based OS in the UK, our infrastructure wont be up to that in this decade!

Vista was awesome. Fact.

 

[Howardtay]

Don't know whether I agree with you as regards Vista, for me it was a bit like an in between OS like ME, Vista was a temporary measure between NT and 2000, it had lots of ideosyncrocies (Ithink thats how its spelt) and was incompatible with most software that was available at that time, so Microsoft once again rushed out an OS before it had been fully tested, I think they increased the number of beta testers for Windows 7 and thats why it was a greater success than Vista, they managed to iron out a lot of the errors before the release date.

Well thats only my opinion.