If you are connecting wirelessly make sure whatever desktop you buy is wifi ready.

Thanks guys. Great help so far. Who makes curved monitors? Someone said Sams Club sells them as an alternative to { shudder} Best Buy?

Unless you just want to waste desktop space, or are a gamer, I’d seriously look at the Intel NUCs. That 2nd link i posted for aamazon can be configured to do more in less space and has better built in graphics.
Just my opinion.

I take it some of you are from the same era as me. :;

quote:

Originally posted by ZSMICHAEL:
Thanks guys. Great help so far. Who makes curved monitors? Someone said Sams Club sells them as an alternative to { shudder} Best Buy?

I saw a Samsung (?) 32 inch curved screen at Sam's Club. Reasonably priced but too big for my desk.

Agreed.

Just make sure that you delete all the non-essential software they pre-load it with (if they are still doing this)

JB

quote:

Originally posted by PowerSurge:
Without knowing your budget I’ll say Lenovo.

Sam's Club Samsung 32 inch curved monitor $179.

https://www.samsclub.com/p/sam...?xid=plp_product_1_1

Macs can run Windows. Frequently better than other brands (driver support, etc.).

quote:

Originally posted by Jimineer:
Unless you just want to waste desktop space, or are a gamer, I’d seriously look at the Intel NUCs. That 2nd link i posted for aamazon can be configured to do more in less space and has better built in graphics.
Just my opinion.

I take it some of you are from the same era as me. :;

The Intel NUC and other small form factor computers are using laptop components to make the small size.

Everything is a compromise between performance, longevity, modularity, power consumption, thermal output, and size. Why prioritize size, power consumption and thermal output when none of those things matter in a small business office environment (for this application)?

A comparable i3 processor in it's desktop format will be cheaper, more powerful, and have more surface area for heat rejection compared to it's equivalent laptop chip.

I don't want to complicate things but you might want to listen to this for a second.
You could use a laptop to host everything.
then keep a large monitor at home as a second screen.

Open the laptop and run everything there, but also plug in the monitor to give you more screen space and the feel of a desktop, but you can travel with it anywhere.

quote:

Originally posted by Aeteocles:

quote:

Originally posted by Jimineer:
Unless you just want to waste desktop space, or are a gamer, I’d seriously look at the Intel NUCs. That 2nd link i posted for aamazon can be configured to do more in less space and has better built in graphics.
Just my opinion.

I take it some of you are from the same era as me. :;

The Intel NUC and other small form factor computers are using laptop components to make the small size.

Everything is a compromise between performance, longevity, modularity, power consumption, thermal output, and size. Why prioritize size, power consumption and thermal output when none of those things matter in a small business office environment (for this application)?

A comparable i3 processor in it's desktop format will be cheaper, more powerful, and have more surface area for heat rejection compared to it's equivalent laptop chip.

You probably know more about it than me but unless you are needing a Xeon class processor, which it doesn’t appear OP needs, an 8th or 9th generation i5 is likely plenty good enough for his needs. As for longevity, depreciate and toss them in 5 years and buy newer, better ones.

With up to 1 TB of m.2 NVMe SSD and 16 GB of DDR4 RAM, I personally see a desktop as a dinosaur - not including special apps like CAD, gaming, video editing, etc.

My workstation class laptop from work is a Xeon class laptop. We don’t get issued desktops anymore except for very few special needs. This is in a company with 40K+ engineers.

The case for a laptop is I can work from any US location including home.

Anyway, this isn’t helping the OP at this point.

And don’t get me started on monitors. Having stared at a computer monitor for over 30 years, 5+ days a week,.....

Yes, I understand that the OP doesn't need a XEON chip.

What I'm trying to get at is that an i3 chip built for laptops is less powerful than the equivalent i3 chip used in a desktop. Laptops operate under power and thermal constraints, and desktops do not.

The Intel NUC uses laptop parts. It's a laptop without a screen or batteries. It trades performance for a small footprint.

Here, the OP has not prioritized a small footprint or low power usage. His money would go further buying a true desktop.

Simply put, the best bang for the buck with regards to performance and longevity is going to be with desktop components. Why compromise on performance, price, or longevity to get a small form factor, when small form factor isn't even on the shopping list?

It's like someone walks in and asks for a body on frame work truck, and you are recommending a cross over sport utility, saying that both have similarly sized engines and room for 5 passengers. Yes, the crossover works for a lot of people and can get a lot done in a tidy package, but a similarly priced bare bones work truck will likely have better capacity numbers.

Sorry...didn't read any of the other responses, but my brother and I just bought this one to replace my mother's PC:

Asus PB60

quote:

Originally posted by Aeteocles:
Don't get an All-In-One. Crappy laptop grade parts shoved into a tiny space to overheat.

I agree with this 100%

quote:

Originally posted by PowerSurge:

quote:

Originally posted by Aeteocles:
Don't get an All-In-One. Crappy laptop grade parts shoved into a tiny space to overheat.

I agree with this 100%

Overheat?

I have 4, none of which has overheated.
One I use outdoors on hot summer evenings in Texas to control a telescope. It’s still going strong.

Thank goodness we have choices. To each their own. Whatever the OP chooses he will be fine. Besides, he’s the boss.

quote:

What I'm trying to get at is that an i3 chip built for laptops is less powerful than the equivalent i3 chip used in a desktop. Laptops operate under power and thermal constraints, and desktops do not.

The Intel NUC uses laptop parts.
It's a laptop without a screen or batteries. It trades performance for a small footprint.

You are right about the first part laptop vs desktop but you are incorrect about the NUC.
It is not a laptop (performance).
It does have limitations on expansion though.
Small footprint does not necessarily equate to lesser performance or reliability.

quote:

Originally posted by smschulz:

quote:

What I'm trying to get at is that an i3 chip built for laptops is less powerful than the equivalent i3 chip used in a desktop. Laptops operate under power and thermal constraints, and desktops do not.

The Intel NUC uses laptop parts.
It's a laptop without a screen or batteries. It trades performance for a small footprint.

You are right about the first part laptop vs desktop but you are incorrect about the NUC.
It is not a laptop (performance).
It does have limitations on expansion though.
Small footprint does not necessarily equate to lesser performance or reliability.

The NUC that was linked to uses an Intel i3 8109U. That's a laptop chip.

And no, a small footprint does not mean less performance or reliability. There are other factors in the compromise equation, such as price (I talked about this earlier).

The issue is we are prioritising small form factor at the cost of something else, but the OP said nothing about small form factor being important.

quote:

Originally posted by Jimineer:

quote:

Originally posted by PowerSurge:

quote:

Originally posted by Aeteocles:
Don't get an All-In-One. Crappy laptop grade parts shoved into a tiny space to overheat.

I agree with this 100%

Overheat?

I have 4, none of which has overheated.
One I use outdoors on hot summer evenings in Texas to control a telescope. It’s still going strong.

Thank goodness we have choices. To each their own. Whatever the OP chooses he will be fine. Besides, he’s the boss.

Computers don't overheat and spew steam out like cars. They throttle performance when they hit their limit to protect the chip. You do not get a warning or an error. Your computer just runs slower than what it's capable of. The only way to know if your computer has hit a limit under load is to run a utility and watch operating frequency and temperature.

My laptop, an XPS 15, will run at full load with the fans blowing full blast and the temp tops out at 78-79 degrees Celsius. My wife's laptop, an XPS 13, will throttle itself within 5 minutes of opening certain web pages. Her fan goes to full blast, the temps run up into 90s and the chip throttles down to 2.4 GHz to cool down. As far as my wife knows, computer works fine. But in reality, computer is rushing to the grave at that rate and not even providing the performance I paid for.

quote:

Originally posted by Aeteocles:

quote:

Originally posted by smschulz:

quote:

What I'm trying to get at is that an i3 chip built for laptops is less powerful than the equivalent i3 chip used in a desktop. Laptops operate under power and thermal constraints, and desktops do not.

The Intel NUC uses laptop parts.
It's a laptop without a screen or batteries. It trades performance for a small footprint.

You are right about the first part laptop vs desktop but you are incorrect about the NUC.
It is not a laptop (performance).
It does have limitations on expansion though.
Small footprint does not necessarily equate to lesser performance or reliability.

The NUC that was linked to uses an Intel i3 8109U. That's a laptop chip.

And no, a small footprint does not mean less performance or reliability. There are other factors in the compromise equation, such as price (I talked about this earlier).

The issue is we are prioritising small form factor at the cost of something else, but the OP said nothing about small form factor being important.

The OP did not say anything about small form factor, I agree. I am betting he was unaware of their existence or he would have thrown that out there. Or maybe I’m plain wrong on that.
To me space is everything and I’ll take a crappy laptop chip to save that space, especially when they do most office tasks just fine. That crappy 8109 with the IRIS 655 graphics runs photoshop just fine for normal photo editing. No, not as quickly as a bigger desktop. But we’ll enough.

When we are looking at new PCs at work, here are some of the things we look for:
- make sure there are 2 sticks of RAM, not 1. So, if 8GB we want 2x4GB sticks, and if 16GB, we want 2x8GB. Using both memory channels instead of just one is the best bang-for-buck thing we look for. We don't buy more than 16GB unless it is for software developers who are running multiple browsers and development tools all at the same time. I've also heard video editors and mechanical engineers need lots of RAM to run their software, but I don't have experience with that.
- get the fastest drive that meets your budget. If you can get NVMe great, if not then get a SATA SSD (makes no difference if it is M.2 or 2.5" form factor), and if you absolutely can’t afford anything else, get a regular hard drive. Fast flash storage is our #2 priority. Capacity is less important than speed for us.
- don’t get a desktop with an external power brick. We do have some ultra-small systems, but we have higher failure rates on pretty much any power brick than we do internal power supplies. This is less of an issue with laptops, where the system will stay running on its battery if the power brick dies. For a ultra-small PC, there is no internal battery to rely on.
- if you use multiple monitors, be very careful about making sure you have enough ports to drive all your monitors. Most people in our office have two monitors and some have three or four. More than two monitors generally means we have to add in a low-end graphics card to drive them. With two monitors, we have had trouble where a PC had two monitors ports, but not of the same type, or it had three but only two would work at a time. If you only use one monitor, there isn’t anything to worry about.
- CPU speed and core count is almost irrelevant when you are mostly running Microsoft Office. Just about anything with 4 cores or more will be fine. We don’t buy more than mid-range CPUs unless there is a specific workload that we know needs it.

Separately, curved monitors are mostly a personal preference thing. I feel they don’t make much sense on anything 20” or smaller, and even on bigger monitors I don’t personally find them to be a noticeable improvement. I wouldn’t pay more money for one myself, but they don’t bother me either so I wouldn’t refuse to buy one if it was a better deal than a flat screen with the same specs.

- Bret

quote:

The OP did not say anything about small form factor, I agree. I am betting he was unaware of their existence or he would have thrown that out there.

Yes I was not aware, but I am now. Thanks