PCs (1 Viewer)

[pete]

i hoped you saved some cash for the Steam Sale

 

[Anthony]

Well this arrived today and we've spend the last while setting it up. The excitement from the boy as we turned it on for the first time after unboxing, installing the wi-fi card, clearing the desk, hooking up the monitor etc was UNREAL.
Thanks everyone for your help.
Now for the first in probably many PC questions:

How important is it to have a Microsoft Account?
( I have one from when I bought the lads xbox live but he wants to start fresh)

We have an xbox already, do they talk to each other at all? What can we do with a windows 10 machine now is the same gaff?

 

[Theseus Mock]

Unless you want to use Skype or use OneDrive (MS's version of Dropbox), a Microsoft account won't stop you from doing anything on the machine itself but you'll probably be coerced into setting one up for downloading stuff from the Windows App Store (kinda like how you need an iCloud account on Apple stuff).The MS accounts will work across all devices (Windows, Xbox, Windows Phone etc). If it's a new Xbox One ye have, you can stream games from the xbox to the windows 10 machine. For the old windows machine, you could set it up to be a Plex Server/file server for video stuff.

 

[Anthony]

Thanks

 

[pete]

Well this arrived today and we've spend the last while setting it up. The excitement from the boy as we turned it on for the first time after unboxing, installing the wi-fi card, clearing the desk, hooking up the monitor etc was UNREAL.
Thanks everyone for your help.
Now for the first in probably many PC questions:

How important is it to have a Microsoft Account?
( I have one from when I bought the lads xbox live but he wants to start fresh)

We have an xbox already, do they talk to each other at all? What can we do with a windows 10 machine now is the same gaff?

If it's a concern, you can set up a parent account for you then use the kids' Microsoft accounts to limit their time on the PC, block access to stuff, get weekly reports on app usage, sites visited, search queries... (There are caveats)

 

[Anthony]

First dumb question. We're looking for an app to just do some simple typing, like TextEdit on a Mac, there doesn't seem to be anything on the PC? We've searched in "all apps". They only one we found was OneNote or something that started asking us all sorts of cloud based questions. Do we have do download something that basic?

 

[ann post]

First dumb question. We're looking for an app to just do some simple typing, like TextEdit on a Mac, there doesn't seem to be anything on the PC? We've searched in "all apps". They only one we found was OneNote or something that started asking us all sorts of cloud based questions. Do we have do download something that basic?

usually notepad or wordpad on the pc's in work here.

 

[pete]

Aye Wordpad is like a super-stripped down version of Word. if you want a proper word processor but don't want to pay for Office 365 (which is worth the 7 quid a month or whatever it is IF you need proper Office stuff) just stick Libre Office on. It's grand.

 

[Anthony]

I found all the type and paint things in a folder called Windows Accessories. Grand.

 

[pissypants]

First dumb question. We're looking for an app to just do some simple typing, like TextEdit on a Mac, there doesn't seem to be anything on the PC? We've searched in "all apps". They only one we found was OneNote or something that started asking us all sorts of cloud based questions. Do we have do download something that basic?

Libre Office like Pete said.

 

[MacDara]

Just been reading back through here a bit - Bee's laptop is on life support after a series of unfortunate events so she's looking at a desktop she can upgrade down the line. Budget is tight (we're talking around €700 for the tower and gubbins; monitor, speakers etc we can upgrade next year) so something with the potential to take a better graphics card, etc is what we're looking at.

I saved the links that were shared here before but anyone know any good UK sellers that do custom or semi-custom builds? (She's handy with upgrades but it's been a long time since she's built a PC from scratch, and faffing about with modern motherboards, power supplies and cable management looks like a headache we don't need.)

 

[Theseus Mock]

That place Anthony got his builds it for you - see post #43 but it looks like they didn't install the wifi card.

 

[MacDara]

Funnily enough we were in Maplins just browsing for an idea today and they didn't seem to have any WiFi cards either. The motherboard bundles they stock have LAN so presumably grand for Ethernet.

 

[MacDara]

That Custom PC crowd seem pretty dear compared to the UK-based sellers we've seen, though, comparing spec for spec like.