Used Win 7 PC buying advice?

i8DRM

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I bought a used Win 7 PC off Ebay, but it turned out not to be useful, so I need some tips or shopping guidelines on what to look for. Mostly I need this PC to play online movies/TV shows, Youtube videos, etc., without buffering, freezing, or similar nonsense. Other than this, it will mostly be used to explore the internet (I have Linux for online banking/shopping). I would like advice on what to look for that will meet these needs. Which Win 7 version...Home or Pro, 32-bit or 64-bit? CPUs: i3, i5, i7? Dual or quad core? Integrated graphics or graphics card? How much RAM? Stuff like this that will help me buy the right PC this time.

So the brands are a choice between Dell or HP....is one better? I require a tower or mini-tower model, so it has a spare 5.25 bay for my mobile rack (what runs my secondary HDD with Linux). I require VGA connection for my monitor. I know there are adapters, but they never work as good as an actual VGA connector. I require minimum 8GB RAM for my 64-bit Linux to run best. If you need additional info, feel free to ask. Thanks for any help.
 
Forget windows 7. buy the pc with it and do the free upgrade to Windows 10 (yes it is still available..........https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows10). Bung an SSD in cloned from your Win 10 installation. Personally I would prefer a Toshiba but they don't make desktops as far as I am aware. I never did like HP particulary and Dell quality has gone downhill recently in my opinion.
 
Yeah, I would not touch the privacy-invasive Win 8/Win 10 if the PC was being given away free. Win 7 is bad enough on that score, and is the end of the line for M$ with me. After it, I go to MX Linux. Been using it in LiveCD mode for about a year now, as a test-drive, and to teach myself how to use it. The Win 7 PC I buy will be a tower or mini-tower, with a spare 5.25 bay to fit my mobile rack, which will have a 500GB SSD for the MX Linux...I'm finally ready to install it, and get serious.
 
Whilst I agree about the Windows privacy invasion thing, if you are going to use Windows, as you are doing, you might as well use the current versions. I do not make an online account when I install Windows 10 and I only accept the basics. the problem is that 99.999999999% of the world is using Microsoft. But if you are insistent on using Linux, and I am okay with that as I use it a lot although not in exclusion, try it from live USB stick. Much faster and very useable with USB 3 or higher. I get it on a stick using Universal USB Installer then I can either run Linux from the stick or install it on my pc..................https://www.pendrivelinux.com/universal-usb-installer-easy-as-1-2-3/ This works well and is easy to use.
 
You can no longer install Windows 10 without online account. The best you can do is delete it after. You could use a disposable account, though. I don't see what's so horrible about that.

About MX Linux, like any Linux distribution, is compatibility. If you want to play games, use design software, etc., you won't find anything better than Windows.

If switching to Linux was that easy I would have done it ages ago, but it's not.

I guess you are looking for hardware recommendations.

What, specifically, will you be doing? If you want hardware recommendations you should provide a few basics:

  • Software that you'll be using. (Will you be running many things simultaneously?)
  • Screen resolution.
  • Budget.

Those things should be more than enough for anyone here to give you good advice on what you should buy.

Advice: Don't buy a pre-built computer. Just buy the components and build it yourself (unless you want to buy used products, in which case buying components is a bad idea because there is no way of testing them).
 
You can no longer install Windows 10 without online account. The best you can do is delete it after. You could use a disposable account, though. I don't see what's so horrible about that. ...
I installed Windows 10 just the other day and didn't use an online account. The option to use a local account has never been completely obvious but it's there.
 
I installed Windows 10 just the other day and didn't use an online account. The option to use a local account has never been completely obvious but it's there.
True. That must be something from the November update. I remember installing before that and there was no longer a way to bypass creating a MS account. I literally had to create a fake account and deleted it later. I just installed it on another computer and bypassing it was the default option. That's very strange. Maybe they received complaints.
 
True. That must be something from the November update. I remember installing before that and there was no longer a way to bypass creating a MS account. I literally had to create a fake account and deleted it later. I just installed it on another computer and bypassing it was the default option. That's very strange. Maybe they received complaints.


They did and you can. I install Windows 10 initially without any internet connection. That skips the "set up a microsoft account" bit. Then once it's installed and running and you have connected it then says to "carry on with the installation" just skip that bit and Windows is then installed with a local account. No doubt Microsoft will block that sooner or later but then I will only use Linux.
 
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