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Miscellaneous Purchasing Advice/Recommendations

Black Hole said:
If you want to revive a tower or desktop, isn't it just a case of fitting a replacement motherboard?
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And probably the CPU and the memory. And then you'll almost certainly need to 'buy' a new copy of Windoze. Depending on its age, your old installation may not work on the new motherboard at all or even properly. So you end up reinstalling everything from scratch. And you might as well replace your HD with SSD while you're at it. I got rather naffed off with all this, so I built a new machine, installed Linux on it and virtualised Windows, so that sort of cr@p won't happen again.
 
Black Hole said:
Behringer tell me that the 502 does have phantom power, just no off switch for it. Presumably this is only on the XLR input, not the ¼" jack.
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For the record, the microphone input arrangements are as follows:

The XLR and the ¼" (stereo) jack feed into a differencing amp to provide a balanced-line input; unbalanced just connects to one of the differential inputs. When there is no jack connection, the internal switching in the socket shorts the jack inputs to ground. There is 15.2V bias on the two XLR inputs, but the jack inputs are floating at high impedance (probably series capacitors, which isolate the XLR power from the ¼" jack).
 
Black Hole said:
No, it's a notebook. ...
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Sorry. I just saw the picture and moved on. It's a folding PC, so not what would be required.

Black Hole said:
If you want to revive a tower or desktop, isn't it just a case of fitting a replacement motherboard?
Click to expand...
prpr said:
And probably the CPU and the memory. And then you'll almost certainly need to 'buy' a new copy of Windoze. Depending on its age, your old installation may not work on the new motherboard at all or even properly. So you end up reinstalling everything from scratch. And you might as well replace your HD with SSD while you're at it. I got rather naffed off with all this, so I built a new machine, installed Linux on it and virtualised Windows, so that sort of cr@p won't happen again.
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Well, yes and no to all that.
I actually built the thing (two in fact) almost exactly 7 years ago (May 2008) and I had XP on them originally. They both had extra RAM added, graphics card replaced (failed), W7 installed and about a year ago an SSD added to this one for the OS and apps (the data is still on the HD).
The reason for thinking about a new one is simply because the rest of the machine is now quite old (in computer terms) and trying to find which component is causing trouble is such a hassle.
However, it is behaving again now (touch wood), so there is no rush to replace it. If it lasts that long I'll probably wait till W10 PCs are established and cheaper (say early 2016) and get one of those.
If it's a hardware fault I don't really see how virtualizing the OS would help - it'll still fall over I'd think.
 
I think the point of virtualising is to isolate all the "I'm going to check which hardware I'm running on and refuse to run if I've been transplanted" windows annoyances from the actual hardware. Great idea, which would have required a mightily powerful machine to run fast enough at one time, but modern processors have hardware virtualisation support.

As for it being a folding PC, I have considered nothing else for many years. Built-in UPS as standard (rarely mentioned), transportability, disappearability, mobility...
 
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Black Hole said:
I think the point of virtualising is to isolate all the "I'm going to check which hardware I'm running on and refuse to run if I've been transplanted" windows annoyances from the actual hardware.
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Quite so.
As for it being a folding PC, I have considered nothing else for many years. Built-in UPS as standard (rarely mentioned), transportability, disappearability, mobility...
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And a small screen. The latest one I use has a shorter screen than the previous one which makes it very tedious when not on the docking station with a proper monitor (I use nothing less than 1920x1080 these days).
 
Black Hole said:
You must have very good eyesight.
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Eh? How so? Used to have, and still fairly good for my age according to the optician (not that I totally believe everything they say), but it's driving me mad in certain respects and finding the right sort of lens(es) is hard work.
 
The greater the output resolution, the smaller the features are on the screen. I find my notebook's 15" widescreen at 1366x768 at keyboard arm's reach (18") about right; any higher resolution would require a commensurate increase in screen size (at the same distance), or an increase in screen size (at the same resolution) would push the monitor further away (no bad thing, but not convenient on a notebook). It's not just a question of the size of features on the screen (I appreciate there is some user control available), there is also the question of the dexterity of mouse control.

What I would like is to switch the screen between landscape and portrait, there used to be monitors which swivel (and the PC output detects the change and reformats to the portrait layout). A portrait monitor is better for documents (which are usually A4 portrait layout).

I had my eye test recently; I go straight to the bottom line on the test charts (with my prescription glasses), the only real difficulty I have is being presbyopic. My myopia and astigmatism are cured by lenses, and the presbyopia is partially cured by varifocals - but I still get to the point where I can't focus close enough and ditch the glasses completely putting up with the astigmatism.
 
Black Hole said:
The greater the output resolution, the smaller the features are on the screen. I find my notebook's 15" widescreen at 1366x768 at keyboard arm's reach (18") about right; any higher resolution would require a commensurate increase in screen size (at the same distance), or an increase in screen size (at the same resolution) would push the monitor further away (no bad thing, but not convenient on a notebook).
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My 22" 1920x1080 is about the same in most respects as the previous 17" 1024x768 as far as I can tell. There's just obviously more of it than before. I couldn't go back now.
What I would like is to switch the screen between landscape and portrait, there used to be monitors which swivel (and the PC output detects the change and reformats to the portrait layout)..
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I've got one of these. Was about £120-130 18 months ago and works for me. Don't believe what they claim about the speakers though. They are completely and utterly useless. I guess they only fit them because it ticks a box. People must be so disappointed. I know I was when I got my previous CRT monitor and they were a reasonable size in the corners but the sound was still hopeless, so I knew what I'd be getting this time.
 
prpr said:
I got rather naffed off with all this, so I built a new machine, installed Linux on it and virtualised Windows, so that sort of cr@p won't happen again.
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I like the idea of this. I have a copy of MS Office 2003 (pre-Ribbon, ie when I still knew how to drive it!) that I have never installed, worried that if I do install it I will never be able to install it on a new machine.

How well does it work for you: Win7 perform OK? Any limitations? I don't think I would use the Linux shell very much, other than to host the virtual machine. No matter what enthusiasts say, no breed of Linux is as slick as Windows 7.

If I am going that way, I will need a PC with hardware virtualisation support (current, potentially ailing, notebook is a Celeron with 4GB RAM - not good enough). The fact is that the vast bulk of the time my "portable" PC is sitting in the same place all the time, particularly now I am welded to my iPad for portable Internet and email access, so resurrecting my old tower (and refitting it), and adding a swivel monitor, and digging out my UPS, is an attractive proposition. Maybe the notebook could then struggle on for infrequent portable requirements.

The downside of not replacing the notebook is that I can currently just pick it up and go, knowing that "it's all there", whereas with an office-bound machine for the heavy lifting, any excursions will have to be planned and required content transferred or made available via Dropbox or whatever. Remote Desktop might help there, if the office-bound machine is left turned on (or can be woken up remotely).

Maybe I should just throw in the towel and try Win8? Any thoughts on that?
 
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Win8 / 8.1 can be made to operate in a similar way to earlier versions i.e. you don't have to use the 'tiles', however you probably won't get MS Office 2003 to run on it, although I have got MS Office 2007 running on Win 8.1
 
Black Hole said:
How well does it work for you: Win7 perform OK? Any limitations? No matter what enthusiasts say, no breed of Linux is as slick as Windows 7.
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It's fine for what I want. I've got 4 VMs running (sometimes more) and it doesn't really stress the CPU. Your mileage may vary, as they say. I find the GUI/apps. in Linux frustrating too. It's so primitive in many respects but surprisingly advanced in others.
Maybe I should just throw in the towel and try Win8? Any thoughts on that?
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I have no personal experience and from what I have read and listened to from those who have, I have no desire to. The W10 nags have started today as well.
 
Our Win7 machines have just popped up notifications offering to reserve an upgrade to W10.
Claims it will automatically download the update when available but not install until we want, so I've said yes for now. Probably try it on one machine for a while before risking all :)
 
Black Hole said:
I would want to know they've got it right this time before doing anything.
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Yes indeed. I wouldn't even install the first one until I'd seen some reports of success by others.
But it is a big download, so letting it work on that for a few days in the background seems fairly low risk.
 
So... do they claim Win10 can update a Win7 or Win8 system, import all the installed software, and it will all "just work"?
 
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