Computer Advice

Just had a quick look on the net, for £500 you should be able to get a reasonable spec PC. I would look for an i5 or i7 processor with SSD (solid state disk), with a reasonable amount of memory. I'm assuming you already have a monitor?

 

Haven’t bought a pc in ages but
https://deals.dell.com/en-uk/productdetail/67j1

was always happy with Dell price/performance.....Black Fri deals

 

SSD hard drive is a game changer. A must. ( Even when it’s “brimmed” it still boots up in seconds. Not like ye olde hard drives when they are quarter full, and you switch on and go make a brew.)

 

If I'd have seen this sooner I would have suggested a nearly new gaming PC. Gamers are a great resource for year old high spec PC's. Music and picture editing do require a bit of oomph!

Your right about apple, I speced out their most expensive mac on the website for a laugh.... 60,000 of your pounds thank you

 

I highly recommend the Lenovo YOGA 2in1 line. Light, slim, basic, laptop-to-tablet features. Good for your general use case.

 

I must admit i only buy refurbished computers these days as buying new is just a waste of money i bought a similar Dell to that a few years ago and its does the job fine but mostly use a refurbished HP elite book with i5 processor and i have just fitted it with an SSD and its transformed it way faster.

 

If you have documents you want to keep on your old hard drive, you can plug it into a spare drive slot in the new computer and connect it. Under your computer drives it should appear as a separate drive with your docs on there, if you aren't upgrading your hard drive to a different drive (SSD) then you may still be able to use the same operating system
When I upgraded to an M2 hard drive (its a chip rather than SSD and a lot faster) I used a Samsung drive copier to mirror my old drive onto the new one, so I kept all my old files and operating system, but all on the new hardware - no need for a new Operating System licence etc.
The M2 is a very fast hard drive but expensive, you must check it is compatible with your motherboard though

You can use https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/ to select a PC and it ensures all parts are compatible
Just make sure you select the correct country in the top right of their screen

Also, use https://www.userbenchmark.com/ to compare the speed of components and identify where the bottleneck is in a system

 

When i checked speed of SSD vs M.2 NVME there was literally .3 to 1.4 seconds difference depending on what your testing games, apps, files etc and for the price difference not worth it...if the hardware is compatible.
I bung all my spare HDDs in a NAS for backup storage surprising just how many you can end up with i have 11 at last count.

 

Definitely a fan of SSD's just updated the wife's laptop with one, transformed it.

 

My second SSD arrived today just in the process of cloning the original HDD so I can speed up my desktop got a new monitor on the way too so I can see my photos on decent screen and process them.

 

After much thought, googling and chewing on the price I abandonded Windows and joined the iMac crowd in 2014 and never looked back. My old W XP machine was nearly 11 years old and couldn't handle HD from my camera. Rather than buy an over-the-counter model I up-specced it for a bit of future proofing with 1TB Fusion drive, 3.5Ghz quad core processor, 16GB DDR3 memory and an upgraded graphics card (which was the main failing on the old XP machine) with 4GB memory. When you spec a machine like this they are built to order (mine in Ireland) and delivered to your door. Took 5 days from ordering to unpacking which impressed me.The Fusion drive is a combined SSD/Sata with 128Gb of SSD (which the OS is on) with the remainder Sata. A full SSD drive was another £1000! It backs up autonamously via Time Machine to a 1Tb SSD drive. I've since upgraded the OS 3 times and it still performs faultlessly. The big "cons" for me with the move were the price and some in compatability with older programs I ran on XP but I have a W7 laptop which I use to run those. Don't regret going Apple for a second but I admit the price took some swallowing!

 

Hasn't Apple just been told to drop their bespoke connectors for the iPhone/pad in Europe and adopt a generic standard? I also have an iPhone and iPad but I'm less happy with some aspects of those!

 

Normally I dislike all things apple, had a few of their phones in the past then saw the light when I went android. Will never go back to an iphone!
I have to confess though, I am hankering for an Imac simply because I have gotten into photography lately. It pains me to admit they are probably the best solution for editing his res RAW files. The spec I reckon I need to do the job easily and for the foreseeable future would cost me 2500 quids... not ready to shell out that kind of dough yet thats not even a pro model, the prices are staggering!