"choosing a new PC is a piece of cake when you follow this advice"

Although we don't sell PCs we encourage you to use our labour services. 

Our opinion may change from time to time as products develop so please check this page regularly

We recommend going to a store and finding any PC within your budget first and foremost. We believe in avoiding false economy situations and often i'm afraid to say the cheapest PC is not always the best deal. So if you want a PC that will last as long as it can, in terms of speedy responses etc, as time goes by and updates come down, then we recommend the following rules.

Follow these rules and ignore the salesmen trying to sell you cheaper systems.

Brand

At the moment we recommend

• Dell
• HP
• Toshiba
• Compaq
• Acer

We don't like

• Sony
• Packard Bell

Component - CPU

The CPU is the most important component to have inside the PC these days. Just look on the spec sheet of the machine and it will mention one of the following:

We recommend the following types - if you get one of these inside you'll get a long lasting speedy PC. They cost a bit more to have one of these inside but its money well spent. It will be faster, faster faster!! for longer. In descending order of speed and ability (best at the top):

• Intel Core i7 or i9 (top of the range) 
• Intel Core i5 (mid range)

we do not recommend the following types - they are cheaper, they sometimes sound the same as the above, but they're not, they're slower, slower, slower!! The salesmen try to sell you these, either to satisfy their sales quota, or because they are... well...... thick! or to be P.C. (no pun intended) 'not trained very well'. 

• Intel Core i3 (basic entry level standard, similar to the dual core's below, (bottom-end)) (64-bit) (BUT, this is the one to get inside, if, you know it doesnt need to be anything special. Like for children, who are going to break their PC/laptop eventually anyway)
  
• Core 2 Duo (32-bit)
• AMD Athlon (32-bit)
• AMD Turion (32-bit)
• AMD X2  (32-bit)
• Core 2 Solo (32-bit)
• x Celeron x (32-bit)

The CPU component is the most important thing to get right these days. Everything else (memory, hard disk space, DVD Drive) all fall into place nicely if you make sure you get one of the recommended CPUs listed above inside your next computer. You'll get plenty of everything else with it, more than you would if you went for the other cheaper PCs (see for yourself when you go browsing different computers, compare the specs) - choosing a new PC is a piece of cake when you follow this advice.

After the CPU the rest is easy, ; the following are simply considerations to read in case they apply to you, its worth a read anyway.

Operating system.

Windows 10 is now the de facto standard. 

Businesses should buy a PC that comes with a professional edition of the windows operating system. So Windows 10 Professional, rather than Home etc. As this makes it easier to share files, set permissions, dial into work (if you have a server), access shared printers, store and manage usernames and passwords for multiple  systems, better backup and recovery procedures.

Size of Tower / Base Unit

I would go for a normal size tower. About 35cm x 35cm x 15cm. If they're calling it a mini tower, or an all-in-one unit then i would steer clear. Because when they fail, and need a part replacing, you're always going to struggle more than you would with a full size, normal size tower. If space is not an issue, then dont make it one.

Touch Enabled Screen

If you're getting a laptop, then get a touch screen. These are a little extra but make a difference when navigating the new windows operating system, and reading long documents, can be easier to scroll using your finger on the screen. Just a consideration for you, with no huge impact either way but i would, and i do find it useful, so i do. Ordinary monitors with desktops are not normally touch enabled. yet. but you can buy touch enabled monitors, they're not quite as nice as laptop screens yet, but they're pretty close.

To DVD or not to DVD, that is the question 

Sometimes you dont get a DVD drive these days with laptops. especially the lighter ones. because.... everything is downloadable from the internet more or less. if you want the lighter laptops and a DVD drive, for the odd ocassion you might use it, then you can buy an external USB DVD Drive separately, and plug it in occasionally.

Desktop PC or Laptop

The above specs apply to both desktops (towers) and laptops. The basic choice involves deciding if you require portability (laptop) or if you prefer bigger screens (desktop). Parents wanting to keep an eye on young children may want a desktop as this can then be kept in a communal area of the house (over the shoulder security).

Cost

Prices seem to have risen since Windows 8 and 10 came out. But i think you'll be looking to spend £450-£500 or above to get a very good PC/Laptop with the components mentioned. That doesn't usually include a monitor if buying a desktop PC. Dont go for a £300 manager's special rubbish! If it doesn't have the above spec you won't get the same quality for less money. False economy. Buy cheap, buy twice.

Games Machines

We don't make recommendations for Games Machines as the market moves so quickly. Nearly all of our customers dont care about playing the latest games, and frankly neither do we (it rots your brain people! seeing entire days disappear very quickly when you play games is not good when you've got things to do and progress to make!). So the above recommendations are for getting a useful and practical PC that will be fast and last as long as possible, 4/5 years easily if not longer. If you do want a Games Machine then spend a lot of money - atleast £800 for a long lasting one that will play games that are coming out in future years- still making sure you follow our advice about the best CPUs.

Server

oh yeah, like we can sum up what to get inside a server in a few sentences. We sell servers, there are lots of questions and decisions. Good starting point - what do you want to use it for? Professional e-mail exchange? File Server - share files securely with employees all over the world/country? Backup server - store lots of versions of your files so you can't possibly lose them? Archive - scan documents in and store them in a slick streamlined fashion for 7 years / indefintely? It can all be done, but you need a consultant to help you make the right decisions for today as well as tomorrow. Virtualisation - is the next big thing. Call

Cloud or on-site server

A mixture is what we think. We dont trust the cloud to keep backups of everything on its own, because a 'Disk in the hand' scenario feels better for peace of mind. Don't be fooled by a cloud company's promises, because when something fails (which it can, it's just a computer like many others, labelled a cloud because of how they arrange them - they can still 'logically' go wrong in the wrong hands), and they can't recover as much of your data as you'd like, all you can expect is the typical 'please see the terms and conditions agreement which you signed'. And that 's it. So even if you have a 100% cloud solution, we would still encourage the use of an on-site backup of that cloud. But the backup also has to be tested to make sure it can get you back to a usable, working state after the cloud fails, which is difficult to do but should be attempted and asked why not if it can't. And a cloud configuration can fail, yes, of course - especially in a logical way if a human misconfigures it and they can't fix it/unconfigure it, and they then insist on doing a restore. You can get some proper muppets in the technical call centres in these places, who just do whatever they want to the system when it goes wrong, sometimes completely unnecessary and illogical things to try making things worse. Unfortunately you won't believe this until you experience it, which we have. So trust us, our methods aren't the cheapest, but when you consider the alternative - there isn't actually an alternative to doing things properly.

Disclaimer: We don't accept any financial responsibilty for any content on this website. The above is our opinion, based on our experience and is a reflection of the decision algorithm we use when purchasing PCs for ourselves at this time. Read it, dont read it. Listen to it, don't listen to it. You should apply these opinions to your own business context.