Business Desktops

[loafer123]

I thought I would put this in Business, rather than Computers, Gadgets and Stuff as it is a business related question.

My wife and I started an online retailer four years ago, running the business from a pair of Lenovo basic domestic PCs.

These have become slower and slower as the business has put more demands upon them, including substantial Excel reporting, lots of image work and therefore hard demands on hard drives and network.

Now it is time to invest in some new tech, could anyone on here make any recommendations for their replacement?

[jonamv8]

We'd need to know a little more I guess about the specs of the old lenovos.

I'd be wanting as much RAM as poss, decent quad core. Not sure on storage but 1TB is cheap these days so may 2.

A SSD would be key to speed

[andy-xr]

Image work usually needs RAM, it's not massively dependent on processor, so anything with a recent i5 would be fine. 8-16 GB RAM for big images is generally enough

Excel itself isnt massively hungry, but it needs a decent processor. Depending on what you've got right now, you could upgrade it on RAM and possibly an SSD if you're finding things are taking a while to open at startup.

The other thing to think about is how you're backing up and storing data and where you're doing that, a cloud backup plan isnt too expensive. Consumer grade desktops often dont have particularly brilliant hard drives

[loafer123]

Thanks, guys - I really appreciate your responses.

All files are in the cloud, using Dropbox, which is working well for us.

The Lenovos are i3 with a 3.33GHz speed and 8Gb of RAM, running Windows 10.

[TwistingMyMelon]

I would get a SSD drive with maybe a further 1tb drive for data (the OS on the SSD)

I would get an I5 processor , i7 would be nice, but will really bump up price

16GB of Ram, 8Gb will be enough

On site 3 year warranty, with 4 hour response time, you dont want to have to send it off to get parts replaced under warranty

Support for 2 x monitors

I buy HP Elite desktops now, never had any issues and are nicely geared to business

Dont forget to backup everything every day! If you rely on it dont trust Drop box will be available 24-7 365

If you are having performance issues, run an app like CC cleaner every day

[loafer123]

I have ordered;

i7 3.6 GHz
480GB SSD
1TB Hard Drive
Twin Monitor Graphics Driver
2x HD monitors

All in an HP Business PC build.

Being delivered on Friday from my local IT shop.

Thanks again for all of your help.

[TwistingMyMelon]

loafer123 said:

I have ordered;

i7 3.6 GHz
480GB SSD
1TB Hard Drive
Twin Monitor Graphics Driver
2x HD monitors

All in an HP Business PC build.

Being delivered on Friday from my local IT shop.

Thanks again for all of your help.

Nice spec, that should tide you over a good few years.