new computer?

[guest rick]

Hi all,
We are moving to tavira end of month and and not sure whether to buy new computer in england or wait and buy in pt. Our old computer is showing its age and is not worth bringing over.
Any suggestions on good, reliable makes in pt, problem with buying here is warranty issues abroad.
all the best,
Rick

[kteee]

It's worth bearing in mind that if you buy one here the OS will be in Portuguese, they also look cheaper in the UK (from the advertising I have seen in UK newspapers!)

[De Boy]

Hi I would recommend DELL COMPUTERS good price, reliable.

We use them at work no problems.

www.dell.co.uk

[duuude!]

i wud buy here if i were you,

prices have been dropping like crazy here in portugal
you can get a top notch laptop here for 999euros

if u want a laptop then get one with a centrino processor, at least 1,6 ghz...
512mb ram or more and a 128mb grafic card...
if desktops is your thing i'd recommend a pentium 4 processor 3.6ghz
512 or 1024mb of ram and a 128mb or superior (512mb for grafic design)
thats if you're a heavy user (internet games and big downloads)

if its for internet and email only i wudnt recomend the above as it wud only be a waste of money, celeron or pentium processor will do fine (2,8ghz)
at least 265mb ram and a grafic card either on board (64mb) or 128mb grafic card...

if you want to download big files but still dont need the pc for games u can always get the last one i mentioned and buy a bigger hdd (hard disk drive, storage space)

before you say "well laptops are better aren't they?"
no they are not, a laptop today has half the processor a desktop pc has, the same ram and usualy half or three times less storage space...

make sure you dont get a amd processor, they are wickedly fast but buggy!


call me crazy but i like pc's LOL

[e-richard]

If you follow De Boy's advice, and its good advice, here's an additional snippet:

Once on the Dell website, click on "Dell Outlet".

This is an area of the website, where they sell "returned orders". You can search and select whatever is in stock at that moment in time - and "time" changes every 15 minutes, so you gotta be quick and know what you're doing. You also don't get the full choice of features. You get whatever is in stock and sometimes thats very high spec and fully featured machines, other times its not - keep trying at various times during the day, and have your credit card ready. I recently bought a laptop there for my wife. It came boxed and looked brand new. Full warranty and all. Just didn't have all the freebie software.

But I did save nearly 40% against the list price !

[malrc]

Extra 5% off some Dell computers today Wednesday.

http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/topic ... l=en&s=dhs

[Guest]

Having worked in IT for over 15 years, and been living/working here in the Algarve (Quarteira) for nearly 3 years now i always where feasible recommend that any computers be purchased in the uk from a reputable company, although prices here have been dropping they are still much higher than the equivalent from the UK (depending where you shop, i am excluding pc world, dixons, currys type stores from this statement).

The main benefits from as a brit buying from the uk are as follows -

1. english keyboard - (only a few of the punctuation keys towards the right hand side are different on portuguese keyboards, but if you have are used to a uk keyboard layout it can cause lots of spelling mistakes)

2. Genuine english operating system - (many small local stores will offer to install it into english but remember to check if it is genuine as frequently used copies of windows xp are detected when you try to run windows updates and it will stop downloading updates, which is dangerous with the amount of security updates microsoft send out to fill the gaps.

3. Warranty, from the big companies like Dell you will receive a fairly comprehensive warranty service, however they do have varying warranty level, for example RTB means it will need to be returned to Dell uk at your expense. Being outside of the uk may mean they will not send a dell engineer from Lisbon depending on the type of warranty you have. Howeever if purchased in Spain (cheaper IVA) through Dell's Madrid headquarters its a europe wide warranty so you can still get engineers sent down from Lisbon. HP is also a good purchase as they have a main service centre in Faro. Do remember though that some uk warranties are 12 months, whereas buying locally will get you two years minimum, however the larger companies will also sell extended warranties.

The only "branded" machines i have come across in Portugal that will install in English are Sony machines, but you will pay a premium for these compared to dell, hp, toshiba etc. Strangely though the specification for these in Portugal is actually higher than the same units in the uk, this is the only company i have found this with to date.

On the subject of processors it depends what you are purchasing the machine for, what its use is going to be.
Athlons can be problematical if built incorrectly, or in a case with poor airflow (pcs are generally air cooled unless you look into more expensive options like water cooling or air conditioned cases) and athlons do run hot, but in a case with good airflow/throughput they give a much greater bang per buck than an intel solution.

As a general rule if planning a low budget games machine or something that is not going to get much use i would recommend athlon, if its a busines machine with lots of applications running or applications requiring high amounts of processor i would recommend pentium.

apologies for the long post as my first one, but its a subject fairly close to me

Peter.
www.mega-byte.eu.com

[pm]

A word of warning about Dell. The support is truly bad at the moment. Used to be good when it was done from Ireland, but now it's a bunch of muppets from Hyderabad who haven't been trained properly. Also the pc's use quite a few proprietary bits, so replacements can be a problem. Aside from that they are just fine and very quiet too and the price is ok if you don't want a games machine.

[pm]

As a general rule if planning a low budget games machine or something that is not going to get much use i would recommend athlon, if its a busines machine with lots of applications running or applications requiring high amounts of processor i would recommend pentium.

That's a very strange sentence all round! What is a 'low budget games machine' for a start?

[Homme Poco]

We have just bought a laptop from currys,for our office in the UK,it was a Packard Bell E2560 Intel Celeron M360 Processor 1.4GHz (I just copied that of the invoice), the cost £450
We thought we would buy the kids one each for chrisrmas ,I know nothing about them, do you(the computor bods) on this topic think they would work OK in Portugal.
Anything constructive would be greatly appreaciated.
Many Thanks
HP

[ptholt]

As a general rule if planning a low budget games machine or something that is not going to get much use i would recommend athlon, if its a busines machine with lots of applications running or applications requiring high amounts of processor i would recommend pentium.

That's a very strange sentence all round! What is a 'low budget games machine' for a start?

for around £400 a small athlon games machine can be bought that will playcurrent games, granted not in particularly high detail or at the fastest frames per second but still totally playable, in fact fairly similar specs to the machines available in Vobis and other local stores for about €1100.

My 6yr old has an old athlon overclocked tbird 1.2 with a geforce 5 and a gig of ram that plays his bob the builder, telly tubbies, disney games etc perfectly, its horses for courses based on what you want to play and how you want to play it.

Personally i use a prometia air condition cooled case which keeps the processor cooled to -35, a gig of ram, and twin sli ndivida grpahics cards but at over £2000 just to buy the parts, this is a rather excessive rig just for games.

[ptholt]

We have just bought a laptop from currys,for our office in the UK,it was a Packard Bell E2560 Intel Celeron M360 Processor 1.4GHz (I just copied that of the invoice), the cost £450
We thought we would buy the kids one each for chrisrmas ,I know nothing about them, do you(the computor bods) on this topic think they would work OK in Portugal.
Anything constructive would be greatly appreaciated.
Many Thanks
HP

They will work fine over here, they are never going to be the fastest machine due to the nature of the processor, but if it does the job needed its a cheap enough laptop, similar spec machines locally would are just under €800 euros (although with Portuguese version of xp and keyboard).

[Guest]

sorry but pentium sucks get amd

i wud buy here if i were you,

prices have been dropping like crazy here in portugal
you can get a top notch laptop here for 999euros

if u want a laptop then get one with a centrino processor, at least 1,6 ghz...
512mb ram or more and a 128mb grafic card...
if desktops is your thing i'd recommend a pentium 4 processor 3.6ghz
512 or 1024mb of ram and a 128mb or superior (512mb for grafic design)
thats if you're a heavy user (internet games and big downloads)

if its for internet and email only i wudnt recomend the above as it wud only be a waste of money, celeron or pentium processor will do fine (2,8ghz)
at least 265mb ram and a grafic card either on board (64mb) or 128mb grafic card...

if you want to download big files but still dont need the pc for games u can always get the last one i mentioned and buy a bigger hdd (hard disk drive, storage space)

before you say "well laptops are better aren't they?"
no they are not, a laptop today has half the processor a desktop pc has, the same ram and usualy half or three times less storage space...

make sure you dont get a amd processor, they are wickedly fast but buggy!


call me crazy but i like pc's LOL

[pm]

If you want to play real games, not teletubbies!, you need a decent graphics card. The processor is really not that important, any recent athlon is just fine. The cpu is going to cost around £70, the graphics card £250.
People like Dell don't really do games machines, they do office ones.

[ptholt]

If you want to play real games, not teletubbies!, you need a decent graphics card. The processor is really not that important, any recent athlon is just fine. The cpu is going to cost around £70, the graphics card £250.
People like Dell don't really do games machines, they do office ones.

Again it depends what the individuals requirements and budget, a cheaper card like an x300 will play anything current, not to any high level of detail or speed but for a cheap price you can still play them, if you want uber games machine to kick serious battlefield 2 backside then its twin sli nvidia and a large hole on the credit card

The dell xps600 range are perfectly adequate as a low end games machine and are indeed marketed to that side of the computing area coming with p4 cpu's nvidia 7800gtx pci express gfx card and audigy 2 sound card.