Your P.C

Do you use it to it's full potential?

I bought an all in one P.C last year, quite a good spec at the time and probably still is now. It's an Acer aspire, has a 21.5" screen, running Windows 7, I3 processor, 4 gig of ram and a terabyte hard drive. The o/h has a laptop with 6gig of ram and a duo core processor, and we both have kindle tablets. The other day a thought hit me, we have these things but never use them, instead our weapon of choice is our mobile phones, that we got free from talk talk.

The other day my phone died and I couldn't be bothered to go upstairs for my charger, so I go in the drawer for the kindle, also dead. I decide I'm going to mess about firing the P.C up, I forgot how fast this thing was, it fires up and is usable in about 15 seconds. There's barely anything on the desktop, there's no music on it and there are no pictures on it, in fact there is nothing on it, I haven't even scraped the surface of the terabyte hard drive as everything is on the laptop and backed up on an external hard drive.

Whilst using the P.C I watch a video on youtube, the volumes right down and I realize the only noise I've ever heard this thing make is the startup and shutdown notifications, so I turn the volume up. I watch the video and think "the sound on this is pretty good" so out of curiosity I put the TT closer to the edge DVD in, set the volume to a decent level and end up watching the DVD right through for the second time, Amazing is the only word to describe it, it puts my DVD player with 5.1 surround and T.V to shame, the picture is extremely crisp and flawless and the sound just sucks you in, I can't believe how a speaker built into such a small surface directly in front of you can produce a sound that just surrounds you, I've yet to play music on it but I will be giving it a shot tomorrow.

The only thing I had used this computer for previously was printing and surfing the web, and when you look at the majority of people they use tablets and phones for browsing online. Most of the people I know don't even have a P.C or laptop anymore as they don't deem them necessary, and mine was sat for a very long period of time doing nothing aswell.

So my question to the forum is, what do you do with your P.C/laptop and do you use it to it's full potential? Do you feel as though you could do more with a better P.C or do you feel you aren't good enough to do it justice?

We always use the laptop for everything, it's ooooold now but it's used ALOT

We do however plan on getting a pc specifically for gaming, not decided on which we prefer yet but that is what it will be mainly used for

ella wrote:
We do however plan on getting a pc specifically for gaming, not decided on which we prefer yet but that is what it will be mainly used for

I thought about a gaming P.C years ago, I read up on some of the better ones and asked for advice online, once people started trying to explain the benefits of liquid cooling and overclocking my brain froze, so I gave up and bought an x-box

I don't know much about computers, I have always had Sony Vaio's which I use for recording music and they always do a good job. However, most programs I use take up the bulk of the memory/RAM.

It's def well used anyway lol!

I hate phones and wouldn't use it for the net unless completely stuck.

i only use my pc if i couldn't use a pc i dont think i would used the net

I use my laptop for everything, but I do need a better one because it can't even play HD videos without crashing, and I want to play games, so need a proper computer.

We have a net book that never gets used, we use ipad or iPhone lol don't use anything else. Unless we need things printing of and we do that at work

I use the pc and my windows phone (although not right now cause it's at the insurance company!).

I don't like laptops much.

Caryll wrote:I use the pc and my windows phone (although not right now cause it's at the insurance company!).

I don't like laptops much.

Me neither, I can't get comfortable with them unless I'm at a desk/table, so may aswell use the PC. Also the touchpad is a pita, always clicking on things when I'm moving the cursor despite having a function that is supposed to stop it happening.

Only ever had a lap top but I use my phone now and all, lap top fits nicely on the sofa

laptop on the sofa, server in the bedroom with all my files on and the hub of the network, unix box for my FTP,DNS and web server plus network sniffer and my phone VPN'd in from everywhere else...yup im a nerd lol.

I use all of them for work so have to stay connected wherever i am, but get this. my boss and clients know that if they cant get me they will wait a couple of hours as I'm out with the dogs and know I wont pick up. I set my phone on auto reject unless its my ex misses or parents and nothing interupts a dog walk, i need that peace with the hounds or id go nuts.

Nathan wrote:laptop on the sofa, server in the bedroom with all my files on and the hub of the network,

I think I understood most of that, by server/hub is it just a super PC with masses of hard drive space and you remotely access everything on it from all the other devices on the same network? Like streaming music from your pc to your x-box but on a bigger/more complicated scale?

Nathan wrote:unix box for my FTP,DNS and web server plus network sniffer and my phone VPN'd in from everywhere else...yup im a nerd lol.

I have no idea what you're talking about, and don't try explaining it to me, I haven't had my bottle of boost and technology makes me very very angry, I hate things that are complicated when they could be simple,obviously it's different for you as it's part of your job.

Nathan wrote:I use all of them for work so have to stay connected wherever i am, but get this. my boss and clients know that if they cant get me they will wait a couple of hours as I'm out with the dogs and know I wont pick up. I set my phone on auto reject unless its my ex misses or parents and nothing interupts a dog walk, i need that peace with the hounds or id go nuts.

I'm not surprised you need a bit of peace with that lot running constantly, I'd pull my hair out if I left my PC on cos it'd be pinging constantly, but I don't like being bothered at all. my phones are on silent and no vibrate when I'm home, I check them when I have time and if there are calls on them I will ring people back, pee's people right off so they stop ringing

bad subject for me at the minute my lappy screen smashed and hard drive kaput
daughters lappy charger port kanakered so both of them are in for repair as of today.
pc motherboard melted and cpu nackerneded due to super clocking lol
never use my s3 for internet as cant be bothered with such a small screen .
cant find the charger for my galaxy tab
so making do with my sises old windows 98 os compaq lappy lol

I live by my laptop for work on VPN to the office unless I'm mobile and on my BB, couldn't survive without my pc , hate internet on the phone unless I am out and have no option . PC all the way

stig wrote:Do you use it to it's full potential?
that we got free from talk talk.

my condolences to you and your family

I use my laptop alot. I have a Blackberry and the internet isn't very good due to the small screen. If I had an Android or iphone I would use the laptop less.

lordmickey wrote:

stig wrote:
that we got free from talk talk.

my condolences to you and your family

I get that a lot, now when we first joined I threatened to break the contract as they were billing our phone at £80pm, I went mad as they were clearly having us over (we really don't use the phone that much). They changed our tarrif andit came down loads, since then we have had internet and 2 mobiles from them and I can honestly say I have no reason to leave when the contracts up. Net is fast enough for what we do, calls and texts never go outside the free service on any phone and the only time we lost service was for 3 days and they reimbursed us a week. Sky, BT and AOL all lost our custom as soon as the contract was up for many reasons, I think everyone has different experiences with certain companies but TalkTalk have by far been the best in terms of price and service, with Sky being the worst.

yeah they're actually not that bad.

(i work for them in the cancellation/ disconnection department)

At end of day if your on standard broadband the speed is determined by the distance from exchange and quality of the line, so if sky said they can do faster they have to move your house!

Aol are talktalk, well they got took over by talktalk. Dont get too many accounts calling in with AOL now though so i think its being phased out.

if your ever having a problem ask to speak to "customer loyalty" (posh name for my dept) and usually guys here are fair top.

you tried the TV?

I moved my broadband from Orange early last year to Sky and they've been fine , got the phone with them too and no serious complaints

Dave wrote:I moved my broadband from Orange early last year to Sky and they've been fine , got the phone with them too and no serious complaints

With Sky the fallout started when they made me pay for the highest net package they had as I was downloading too much, I never diwnloaded anything I even stopped windows updates, the phone line was so bad I was getting half a megvif I was lucky, could hardly do anything on net it was so slow. Engineers keot coming and saying all was ok and I was too far from the exchange, which was a lie as when I started out with them I was getting 2 meg. Cancelling when the contract was up was a complete nightmare and took months. Their phone package was good value for money but the line was so quiet we barely used it, if they'd have just repaired the line I'd probably still be with them.

Mickey-We don't get cable in our are believe it or not, but it is coming apparently, and tbh we don't watch enough T.V to justify paying any more for it, freesat+ more than caters for us, the only ones that lost out when we cancelled Sky was the kids as they had playhouse disney, just buy them DVD's now

stig wrote:

Dave wrote:I moved my broadband from Orange early last year to Sky and they've been fine , got the phone with them too and no serious complaints

With Sky the fallout started when they made me pay for the highest net package they had as I was downloading too much, I never diwnloaded anything I even stopped windows updates, the phone line was so bad I was getting half a megvif I was lucky, could hardly do anything on net it was so slow. Engineers keot coming and saying all was ok and I was too far from the exchange, which was a lie as when I started out with them I was getting 2 meg. Cancelling when the contract was up was a complete nightmare and took months. Their phone package was good value for money but the line was so quiet we barely used it, if they'd have just repaired the line I'd probably still be with them.

Mickey-We don't get cable in our are believe it or not, but it is coming apparently, and tbh we don't watch enough T.V to justify paying any more for it, freesat+ more than caters for us, the only ones that lost out when we cancelled Sky was the kids as they had playhouse disney, just buy them DVD's now

is plusnet not the best deal for you being in yorkshire ????