What’s your thoughts on a new used computer?

[Ron Barnes]

Seems my computer died today, virus I suppose.
It was a Dell desktop 2003 with Microsoft XP. I used it running the 2007 PRS standard I bought in 2007 and run part works version 1.0.

My question is what are your thoughts on the type of computer I should look at for running it again? I was thinking still running XP and as much as I’d like to, I can’t see the jump for something to run Aspire.
Is a laptop any better than a desktop? How is XP with the last version upgrade for parts works and shopbot control software. I think my version was a 3.5.3 or something very small..

Shoot me some ideas. Thanks

[phil_o]

I bought a refurbished Laptop about a year ago, a Lenovo Thinkpad. It came with Windows 10 and a 500 gig solid state hard drive, 8 gig ram. 2.6 gigahertz processor for $300. It runs Aspire and my Shopbot fine.

Phil

[steve_g]

Ron…

I would caution you regarding using a laptop… they typically have extensive power saving features built in that could suspend some or all functions during a file run… I’ve been using a NUC for several years now. I originally bought it because I was told it was “fan-less” and hoped that meant it would perform better in a dusty environment… it does have a CPU fan though…

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/boards-kits/nuc.html

SG

[coryatjohn]

When my SB computer died last year, I bought a "custom" used computer off eBay with a solid state harddrive and Windows 7 for a grand total of $150. It's so small it fits on a book shelf. Works great.

[chiloquinruss]

So a while ago the local school district was having a 'get rid of stuff' yard sale. They had some ancient PC towers for $25 ea. I bought 4! Put in a new HD in the first one, loaded XP and it's still chugging away. I have nothing other SB on that machine. I do the file loads using a thumb drive. The cnc machine requires very little in the way of computer power. ;) Good luck. Russ

[Marc F. Lupien]

I have a refurbished desktop lenovo with windows 10, nothing fancy. I added an SSD and transfered windows on it - kept the standard hard drive. The SSD makes it boot in around 10-15 secondes which is something I wanted in the shop. Its a good addition.

I used to run a laptop from HP but I had problems. Lenovo is very reliable i think.

Poeple want to stay away form recent windows OS but windows 10 works perfectly fine. You can disable automatic updates (and check manually often) to be safe. Keeping an up-to-date PC is important for software compatibility. One benefit is being compatible with my home computer: that way, I can work on projects from my home computer (using vcarve or Fusion 360 which I use more and more) and save my files to the cloud (OneDrive) then go in the shop and access the project files from the cloud... very convenient. Other advantage of a recent OS is I can, for example, load the driver required for the small usb camera I installed on my router in order to allign the zero X and Y for some projects. With an older OS, none of the new hardware works properly.

BTW, viruses can't break the computer hardware.

It's just my humble opinion.