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I am looking at getting a new computer. My lap top is great but it does not let me paint large digital pictures with ease and agh, Corel Painter laggs so I have not really gotten to have fun with that.
So, people who do a lot of digital painting here, what pc/monitor set up do you have, how do you like it, how well does it work, any glitches? Any recomendations?
I talked to a tech and best buy and got some information, (omg it was so much fun! I have not had a conversation like that with some one who knows about the latest machines in forevor!)
I looked at the HP Touch Smart All-in-One..because..well…it was shiney..and OMG TOUCH SCREEN!!! The machine itself was more impressive then I expected and being the first one to really get info on is really tempting..but there are some issues that are not well liked. First and chiefly, you can not switch out components on your own…………easily. I am sure I could maybe, but it looked like a solid casing, so it would be line having to crack open your lap top.(lap tops are fun to do! but a solid monitor computer? I do not think I would want to be that risky..)
I also got some info from Cnet about a slim tower by Gateway. Smaller but this thing lets you open up the casing and replace components, whichs is cool. Smaller means not a lot of space for adding extra, but I am not a gamer, I just want my art programs to run………….smooooooth…….
But I have not really tried one of these smaller machines, can’t be much different from the touch screen I would think.So! What do you guys have?
First off… Don’t get a Gateway! I’m a computer tech who works on computers for a living, and I LOVE HP machines… I have owned many brands and Gateway was one of the worst ones. However that was a while ago
I currently own a HP Dv6000z (Laptop) and I love it for messing around on. It runs Photoshop CS3 no problem, and for being a 4 year old computer it’s great!
Dell’s aren’t that bad either, but if I were to get a Desktop I would look on Buy.com or Newegg.com for a nice HP. Maybe an Intel Core 2 Duo or Quad Proc. with 3+ GB ram and 512MB-1GB Graphics card, and good sized Hard Drive.Refurbished computer aren’t bad either, and you can save a lot of coin. Might think about the extended factory warranty if it doesn’t come with a good one.
I would also try to avoid AMD processors (The processor slows down more than Intel when it gets hot) and go with Intel.. Sure you might spend a little extra $, but it’s totally worth it.
I don’t like the small form factor desktops either, because the components are closer together and that causes more heat, and in turn slows down the PC.I really don’t like Windows Vista *Cringes* because it’s not user friendly. Try to get Windows XP Pro or 7 Pro/Ultimate.
That’s my 2 cents. :yes:
Of course it’s user preference, and I think AMD processors are better than they use to be.
Something like this is a monster! You would have to order a seperate monitor tho.
http://www.buy.com/prod/hp-pavilion-p6310y-desktop-2-8ghz-amd-athlon-x4-630-6gb-1tb-dvd-rw/q/loc/101/215203074.htmlTHANK YOU!
Yeah, currently my lap top is a Gateway..and MAN.*head desk* Vista HATES it. It crashes completely once every 4 months or so. I’ve re-installed Vista around 10 times now in the one + year I have owned it. Before that I had an HP Lap top. You remember when they came out with that monster searies that was like a folding desktop almost? Back when XP was still being sold. They had a nice mate silver casing with black. I loved that thing and it lasted 3 years about, until the screen went and when I went to ask about replacing it they informed me that the warrenty had expired the week before. I have had other HP computers and my parents current one is HP and I just love it. It is just so user freindly and very flexible..and I do think they use better components.
Any way, I’ve had this flunky Gateway, but I am going to see how 7 works on it. Some guy had mentioned that he just installed Vista on his machine and turned off the updates, but I would like to maintain net access so that would not be a good idea for me. The tech I talked to mentioned that the Gateway systems when vista came out were using hardware(?) I think is what he said, that he felt was conflicting with vista’s already glitchy system. So I think that there is a 50/50 chance maybe that 7 will eather run better, or just crash like vista if that is the case…. At least I can try it and see how it runs. I did change out the ram in my lap top, so it has 4 gig ddr2.
The Gateway that you had, was it a desktop?
YES, I was wondering about that, I looked at the photo of the Gateway slim tower and was wondering about the heat issue, how well does that single fan work with everything crammed like that. I know on my Gateway Laptop, the fan is crap. when you open the casing, it really is not placed in a good spot to really use airflow and I was really scared the board would fry. I finally made a pvc stand and that has helped a lot but I did NOT have the same issue with my HP laptop that was much older.
When I looked at the HP Touch Smart, I was concerned about heat being an issue too because of how compact everything is, having your board right behind the screen. But that thing has a whole cooling strip on the back and when I looked at it at the store, it was very cool to the touch. Low sound but you can feel the airflow as well, that is being sucked in. The tech said they leave it on all day, so I was very surprised at how cool it was to the touch. At the same time, I nice long strip like that seems like it would such in a lot of dust, but he said a can of air should blow it out just fine.
YAY. I was looking at that and wondering the difference between AMD and Intel. AMD has been tanking over the last few years compared to intel, hasn’t it? If I remember right, my HP laptop had an AMD chip, but that was back in 05-06. It ran pretty fine, but again, I was using XP and not using the process demanding programs. My gateway right now has an Intel chip, and it really does well trying to keep up with the crap vista throws at it. I’ve read some nice things about the newer Intel chips that have come out since last year, but it is really nice to hear some one else opinion on them.
I’m not a tech, I just kinda like working on my own machines when needed and it’s a small hobby to learn a bit about computers, so if there is something I have not heard of before I catch on pretty quick. But looking at specs strictly just makes my head spin. It tells me nothing about how the machine and components work together and I have not had the opportunity to really check out manny of the different brands and especially not the newer machines, so I REALLY appreciate the input from people who have been able to do so and know thier stuff. 🙂
I have recenty found out how to fix laptop LCD’s. Most of the time it’s just the backlight that goes bad, you can still see the screen if you put a flashlight against the screen.
The total price is about $25 each CCFL light, and some screens have 2.Yes my Gateway was a desktop.
I have seen many Dell slim PC’s crash due to overheating.. Usually some capacitors get too hot on the motherboard and start to go bad and the system eventually crashes.
We have a couple HP Touches at my office, and I really like them. Not quite sure about reliability yet, but they are really cool and fun to work on, and very fast. But you can get a better desktop for your money.
Here is why I like Intel over AMD
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06MYYB9bl70I too have heard some awesome reviews on the new i3 i5 and i7 processors if you are willing to spend the money. 😀
My HP laptop looks terrible because I’ve had it a long time… And have repaired things myself (I haven’t treated this thing nice at all and it works great! lol)
It’s funny because most computer geeks have old PC’s because we can repair them ourselves. 😈Ok, hoping I didn’t mistype anything, since I’m trying to work on a server spreadsheet here at work at the same time. 😳
Are you looking for desktop or laptop? I’m in the market for a new computer this year myself. If you go for a Windows Operating System, I would suggest Windows 7 Pro. Vista is crap and with Windows 7 Home, you are limited as to what settings you can change and stuff, which can get annoying very quickly to anyone with a little computer knowledge who likes to tweak their machine and settings. Worth the extra hundred or so for a lot less hassle.
I second staying away from Gateway. The quality is ‘eh’ and they have a lot of problems, and their customer service is crap. I’ve seen too many issues with them. I’ve seen those HP Touch Smart monitors too and they really do make me drool over the shinyness.
I have liked Dells and I do like my Dell desktop replacement laptop I have for work (granted it is also $2500 with a 17 inch monitor… this thing is a beast!), but Dell’s customer support is starting to wane and they are going the way of Gateway with becoming more and more proprietary. I’m looking to stay away from them this time around.
Toshiba’s aren’t bad. The first SONY VAIOs were good, but the quality has gone down a bit as compared to a few years ago.
I would love a MAC, but other than price for what you are getting, the one thing that steers me from them is the fact that I can’t do any work on it myself. If I need to add memory, I’m overcharged and have to take it somewhere to have them do it for me. I work on computers for a living and this pisses me off to no end.
Don’t forget to check bus speed. You can have all the memory in the world, but if you have a very low bus speed, it will just bottleneck and mean nothing. Don’t get anything below a 2 GHz processor at absolute bare minimum, but above 2.6 would be way better. I think Windows 7 requires a minimum of 2.8, but I could be wrong about that. Higher is better.
Personally, I’m looking at either HP (can be hit or miss, but MUCH better than years ago… they had to recover from inheriting Compaq and dealing with the bugs that came with that crap), Asus (they actually have VERY good tech support and some decent stuff out there, not necessarily what is in the store), and Alienware (good, but pricey, but Dell has bought into them, so something to think about. Dell’s gaming systems are are all done through Alienware). MSI machines can be good too. If you want to go Unix and want a GUI interface, I would recommend Ubuntu. You can emulate a lot of Windows things, including photoshot. Check online. You can get some really good deals and get exactly what you want. I’ll walk around Best Buy to see what they have on occassion, but I don’t buy from them and I never ask for advice from one of their ‘Geeks’. If they have a sales rep. from a company there though, they can be pretty knowledgeable. The Geeks are very lacking in their knowledge. Even with personal experience, some of the things they’ve tried to tell/sell to me have been absolutely ridiculous (it’s worse being a girl IT person too… they never expect that). If you are doing for a desktop, you can always build your own.
AMD is cheaper, and meant to handle faster processing, but it can lock up more and tends to overheat more. Linux/Unix works well on AMD. Intel is more robust and can take the heat more. Windows would be better to run on Intel because of the heat generation and how much of a resource hog Windows is, but in all honesty, you can run any OS on either AMD or Intel. The motherboard can make a difference.
Newegg is good for deals. A coworker just yelled to me to suggest Geeks.com as well.
Oh, handy tip for owners of large flat screen TVs…. if you get a line in your tv, you can ‘massage’ the line to eventually diminish. Also, on LCD monitors… they are allowed to have so many bad pixels and still be considered good. I think it’s like 7.
Ok, back to work with me…
If you are looking for something already made, I’d look around some of the geek IT forums for reviews on anything you see that you like.
Disclaimer: I use Painter and not Photoshop, so my advice follows thusly:
My husband builds my computers custom for me for what I need, so I cannot recommend any given brand name of a pre-built tower. However I CAN tell you that with any current processor set up, the things that will benefit you most are lots of RAM, but more importantly is hard-drive speed, which is something a lot of people tend to forget (and may not even consider). Any current processer is going to smoke Painter just fine, your cinch point is actually hard drive speed, because of the way Painter deals with page file requesting.Other than that, how important is color accuracy in a screen? Unless you are dropping over $800 just in a screen (I can’t afford that) you’ll want to carefully research which lower end LCDs have the best color accuracy. When I got it over a year and a half ago, my acer AL2216W had the best color accuracy in the lower tier of LCD screens ( <$500 ). Dig online to see what will work best for you if this is importantl (hint: it's very important if you plan on doing work that will be physically printed!).
Volunteer mod- I'm here to help! Email me for the best response: nambroth at gmail.com
My art: featherdust.comHAHA! Yeah, I know what you mean. My keyboard crashed on the old one, my space bar died, and I replaced that myself. Also upgraded the ram. At the time they only had one stick with an easy access panel, so to replace the other you have to open up the whole casing.
When the screen went though, the reason I thought it was not the back light was because when I would open it, the colors were distorted to your basic red,green, yellow, with grey shades. if you pinched the lid casing right, the colors would go back to normal….so I was doing that for a while..until it started getting worse and happening more often. When I found out the warranty was no longer any good, I opened up the casing to see if it might have been a wire issue. But I could not find anything at all that was loose or looked like it was shorting, which seemed to me to mean that most likely the screen was dieing. The screen setup, how it was connected, looked like a little bit of a pain to replace and there are some soldering tools I did not have. So I traded it with my friend for a refurbished Gateway since he has the tools. That is awesome to know though!From what I was reading, the Gateway was the best liked out of these smaller towers that have been coming out. But looking at the photo of how they have all the components placed, I can see how easy it would overheat. Things are pretty crammed in there and how they have the fan, it looks like it just sucks the air in and spits it back out rather then circulating it around the board. I don’t know if it is the same setup for other brands, but I don’t think there is manny other ways to place things in such a small space. It’s too bad, because it seems like a great idea. I am sure if could work but you would have to completely go with a different design rather then trying to stick to the classic tower look.( At least in theory I could see it working)
Yeah, I agree. I think one of the biggest issues I have with the HP Touch is that for that much money, I would like a design that lets me go in and change out parts. I am sure it can be done, but at first glanced it looked like that would be a real pain to do yourself and the guy I talked to seemed to wince at the idea. Very pretty eye candy though. I might have to drop by the store again just so I can play with it some. He said that the one they had there was 5’th generation and it sounded like they had fixed a lot of bugs and issues when I asked about some specific probloms I guesed you could expect to run into.
OMG!! wow, that is really awesome to watch. I’d say that is pretty solid evidence! That is kinda scary if you do not have good cooling for an AMD chip. I can definately attest to my intell chip. Before I got a good setup for my laptop, there were a few times it really got pretty hot, so I turned off the computer or grabbed a can of air just in case. But it never showed any really bad lag or errors when that would happen. With it completely lifted off any surface a good 5 inches now, it only gets very lightly warm. My Gateway/vista laptop may make me pull my hair out every few months, but I’d rather try to make it work better then kill it.
Hay man, repairing your own is sooooo much better then buying a new one every three years! I think that is pretty awesome.
Awesome! Thanks Sib! That definitely covers a lot of direct info that would have been harder for me to find on my own. I have not really looked for a pc for myself before so I was not entirely sure what to look for, but I did know I want to make sure I do my research. I am definitely wanting a desktop.
I’m starting to lean more to a build-your-own. I have never really built one before, so it is a little bit of a strange thought to me…but it probably would be the best way to get exactly what I would need and would be exciting. Don’t they have a few brands that actualy let you customize what you want and build it then ship it to you? I thought I saw an advertisement for that. I might stop by best buy again to look at what they have and some of the specs but from what I remember in my last visit, I don’t think the bus speeds were all that spectacular on the pre-packaged machines they had. I don’t think most people that those machines are targeted at really care, or use a computer in a way that that would matter.
AH! yeah, I might not know a lot, so it is really bad when I talk to some one and know they don’t really know what is going on. We have a few good guys at the one I go to, like the guy I talked to..but he was not part of the squad. I have run into more there that really do not know much. I like using the place to kick tires pretty much.
I’ve never heard of Geeks.com. I’ll have to check that out. We have a Fry’s electronics in the next big city over so once I get a better idea of what I would like and what I can afford, I may check out what they have on hand there as well. I also have never checked(or thought of) IT forums before.
I tend to be biased towards HP. You know, for all they hype of alien wear, there is something about them that I don’t quite like..but I just can’t put my finger on why..
YAY Jen! Thankies, I was hoping to hear what you could advise. I am not a photoshop painter at all…I really prefer the natural affect of a digital brush blending while laying down color at the same time..so I easily adapted to Opencanvas even though it is very basic. I’ve wanted to try Painter more and I have Painter10 but is seriously kills my retarded Gateway. It just can’t keep up with how fast I like to splash things on. So the needs of painter is definitely what I wanted to know!
But I do use photoshop for editing my photos. Hog program that it is.I know a LOT less about screens. That is probably going to take more research for me, so I really appreciate knowing what to look for on that. I definately can save up a good amount, might take a few months but it can be done…but I definitely am not fortunate enough to get enought money for a nice machine and one of those $1000 screens. So if I do go the build your own rout then I will have to see what screens are more compatible and fit for some where more like $500.
Thank you every one, I really really apreciate all of this input!
Just 1 more note. 32bit operating systems can only utilize 3GB of ram, so it doesn’t matter if you have 4GB+ it’s only going to see 3GB.
64bit operating systems can utilize as much as you would ever need.Just FYI so you don’t waste your money buying more than 3GB of ram if you have a 32bit OS. 🙂
sagiaparri wrote:Just 1 more note. 32bit operating systems can only utilize 3GB of ram, so it doesn’t matter if you have 4GB+ it’s only going to see 3GB.
64bit operating systems can utilize as much as you would ever need.Just FYI so you don’t waste your money buying more than 3GB of ram if you have a 32bit OS. 🙂
Ah yeah, so that is the same for windows7 then.
I have 4 gigs in my laptop even though I only have 32 bit. I got it just in case I wanted to upgrade. That is interesting that the 32 bit will only recognize 3. That is not something I would have remembered when looking around, thank you.daydreamer wrote:what, no love for macs? 😀
I support Windows, because it breaks down.. And then I get paid to fix it. 😆
So in some way, Microsoft is paying me. No really, I haven’t messed with MAC enough, but I do like Bill Gates idea of lower prices that way more ppl can buy them and not only the “Elite”.daydreamer wrote:what, no love for macs? 😀
I like macs and would love one, but until I have the money to splurge on one (I can get a better machine with the same specs and half the cost and run Ubuntu – still no viruses – and be able to fix parts on my own if something needs replacing), I won’t be buying one any time soon. I refuse to send my computer to have someone else replace something as simple as memory when I spent 4 years getting my degree to do just that and more. Total cost analysis. 8)
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