<p>My DH needs a new desktop very soon. Is it worthwhile to wait for the post Vista OS to come out?</p>
<p>What specs are now middle of the road? Not cutting edge, just not going to be outdated in 18 months. His 5-10 year old machine is so slow and cannot handle the newer programs very well, it bogs down and is frustrating to work with. He uses mainly proprietary financial software…can he go Apple or is that to difficult in non-creative businesses?</p>
<p>What would the experts recommend?</p>
<p>somemom - does he really need a desktop? I have converted my whole family to laptop. We have Dell’s wide screen Inspiron. It is very powerful. I wouldn’t get the post Vista OS because whatever it is will be buggy, just like Vista. I have Vista. It crashed in the beginning because of non-compatible softwares, now most of them are compatible with Vista. I got my husband Mac Air. He loves the size, but he is not a power user.</p>
<p>I would go with a laptop as Oldfort suggested.We converted our whole office to laptops a while back. You can buy a docking station which a mouse, montior and printer will plug into. If you want to take the laptop somewhere you just unplug it from the docking station. When you are at home everything is hooked to the docking station and doesn’t have to be replugged in every time you move the laptop.</p>
<p>Our house is wireless, so we could move our laptop around and also use wireless option for our cell phones (iPhone and BB).</p>
<p>I use a laptop, but he does not like the key board, is there a way to address that? Docking station?</p>
<p>So when does the Vista replacement come out? Can you do math type stuff on apples or is it still like the olden days when creative = Mac & numbers = PC??</p>
<p>Same here. We converted over to laptops. It was so nice to get rid of all those extra wires!</p>
<p>somemom - my husband has the whole Office suite on his Mac. I would look into whether your husband’s proprietary financial software would be compatible with Mac.</p>
<p>Windows 7 is supposed to come out either mid 2009 or sometime in 2010…there have been conflicting statements from within Microsoft. </p>
<p>and as for average specs for a new desktop, I would say a dual core processor, at leastr 2 Ghz I would say, and at least 2 or 3 GB of RAM. the hard drive size really just depends on how much storage he would need, and that is easy to expand with an external hard drive if he ever needs more storage.</p>
<p>I’ve been thinking of replacing my desktop with a laptop as well, but I understand the typing issue. I really don’t like typing on H’s laptop - I find it’s too flat, whereas I can have my keyboard slightly angled up on the little flip-out legs at the back. Plus I like the more typewriter-y feel of the keys.</p>
<p>A laptop will generally cost more than an equivalent desktop. If he’s happy to be chained to one spot, a desktop makes more sense. A laptop with a docking station is about the same as being chained with the desktop although you can usually plug in a keyboard without needing a docking station. With a desktop the keboards are usually better, the mouse is usually better since it’s permanent, and the displays nowadays are usually really nice - 22-24 inch LCDs. I even have a tuner card in mine that allows one to watch and DVR TV on it. A desktop is usually best for gaming.</p>
<p>Given that, I have both a desktop and a laptop. My wife mostly uses the desktop and is happy with its placement and I like the laptop for its portability since I use it in lots of places. It’s nice to be able to use the laptop in the LR and be with everyone else while still using the laptop. There are times when me and both Ds are lined up in the LR all on our laptops (they’re CS people).</p>
<p>It’ll be a while before the Vista replacement comes out and then if it’s like the other OSs, most people will want to wait until a little while after it comes out to get it. I think you should just go ahead and get Vista. I use it on several differnt desktops/laptops and it works mostly fine (mostly - I get occasional bluescreens only when Remote Desktopped into a desktop). According to Microsoft, one of the big complaints they plan to accommodate in the next OS is to make it more downward compatible with drivers and devices than Vista was. This should make it easier to upgrade to.</p>
<p>For a desktop, consider a quad-core with 3G of memory, Vista, 22-24" display, multi-card reader (so you can plug you camera memeory card straight in), Writeable DVD drive, decent KB and mouse. It s/b upgradeable to the next OS. </p>
<p>For a laptop consider the size firstmost. A lot of peope tend to get a larger one than they probably should and have some regrets as to the bulk and weight. I’ve decided the weight of an item is directly proportional to the distance one needs to carry it and increases in weight with the square of the distance! I like around a 14 inch inch widescreen and think the 15.4" models are too big. If I never moved it much then I might be willing to go as high as around a 17" model. I think a 14" model is a good compromise. With the laptop also make sure you get adequate disk space, a built-in DVD drive, and reasonable memory - at least 2G.</p>
<p>For brands - Stick with the name brands - Dell, HP, Lenovo, and some others or Apple if you’re into those. </p>
<p>I got my last desktop (quad-core, 3G, 22" monitor, etc.) as a bundled Gateway at Costco for a reasonable deal. My current laptop is a Lenovo but I’ve had Dell laptops for years. My D has a Dell Vostro laptop which is nicely built, has a metal case, is quiet and cool, and was a reasonable price.</p>
<p>If you are buying online google “computer brand coupon”. The last 2 Dells we bought I found really good coupons online that got me much more computer for the same price than the deals on the Dell site (you enter the coupon nunber and it replaces their deal if it is a better deal). Wish I had known about it when I bought my son’s computer. There are generally good Dell and HP coupons out there.</p>
<p>laptops also use much less energy than desktops.
You can always use your old monitor when needed.</p>
<p>I have a MacBook Pro 17 Inch and it’s a workhorse. I use it as my office computer (I turned off my office computer some time ago) hooked up to two additional monitors. I have a Bluetooth Mouse and Keyboard setup to solve the keyboard issue and carry around a small BlueTooth mouse when I’m on the road. At home, I use an old Dell desktop with dual monitors and I can hookup one or two laptops to the desktop using Synergy (open source software). This software allows me to use one keyboard and mouse set to control my desktop and several laptops (usually one or two).</p>
<p>I’m am slowly giving up on Vista. I bought a Dell laptop with Vista on it for traveling (my MacBook Pro is about 7 pounds) and my opinion is that Vista is a piece of crap for the processor and disk that I have on that laptop. I think that performance is better on desktops with quad-core processors and high-performance disks.</p>
<p>Apple’s new MacBook and MacBook Pros (15 inch) look great. If Apple had the MacBook this past summer, I would have gone with that.</p>
<p>Wow- just heard back from one main company tech guy, the main program we use would NOT work on any Apple hardware :(</p>
<p>Somemom…I am the person who could help you the least on here as I am very non-techy (I don’t even know what Vista is!!). But…I no longer use a desktop computer. I use my laptop (I am on a Mac). But…I don’t like using that keyboard either (like your hubby) and so I have a regular keyboard and mouse that are wireless (we have wireless in our house). As well, I have a very big flat screen on my desk. It is connected to the laptop. Everything is running through the laptop but I am not typing on it or using the screen itself. When I travel, I take the laptop.</p>
<p>“Wow- just heard back from one main company tech guy, the main program we use would NOT work on any Apple hardware”</p>
<p>He’s probably wrong. Apple hardware is the same as the other companies’ hardware. You can run Windows XP or Vista dual-boot via BootCamp or as a virtual machine under Mac OSX.</p>
<p>^^ But for a cost - the price of the additional OS.</p>
<p>something to keep in mind about the Windows 7: it will be build on top of Vista. However it will not suffer from the same driver issues and software compatibility issues will that other versions of Windows have. The reason for this is that Microsoft is going to maintain Vista compatibility in Windows 7 and it’s going to use the same base of drivers. So if you have hardware/software that can run on Vista, you may not have issues with it. Windows 7 before you know it will be here. Not sure how long you can wait, but it’ll probably be worth it if you can. Even better is the fact that it will use less resources and require less power than Vista. They’ve shown Windows 7 running on netbooks just like Windows XP/Linux OSes run on netbooks without any slowness or lag.</p>
<p>Now depending on what software your husband uses, he can get a bunch of great deals from any vendor out there. I’ve seen machines running with 2Ghz dual-core processors and 4GB of RAM for less than $1,000. The hardware in computers today is so cheap it’s ridiculous. Take a look at Dell’s XPS line of desktops. Take a look at HP’s desktops. i’d say when you get the computer it will come down more to aesthetics than the actual hardware only because they all seem so dirt cheap and have just about the same specs. the base hardware some of these machines bring is good enough and should last you quite sometime I’d say. And I say that because hardware seems to be growing/getting much faster than software actually requires.</p>
<p>Had I known the hardware out today was going to be this cheap, I would not have build my current computer. I spent almost the same amount of money about 5-6 months ago to build my current computer and already the hardware is up if not better than the specs on my current machine.</p>