I did calculations on upgrading my very old computer back around the holidays and deemed the upgrade performance was not worth it for a $400 computer, and definitely not a laptop. lol I would have to spend a lot more on a higher end system for the increase to be worth it, and the processor alone cost more than that. I've already upgraded the components that can be upgraded. I'll probably consider again near the end of the year if I have any money left over, the way things are going.
GenXguy, the way things are going, I hope we can afford a Texas Instuments calculator…one of the first electronic gadgets I ever got as a teen.
GenXguy doing his part to fight inflation!
You can run Win 11 on "unapproved" machines, so that is an option. If you run Linux you can run Win 11 in a Virtual machine like Virtualbox or QEMU (more performant, but for advanced users).
I'd like to keep my old obsolete Mac running as a back-up and to let DW have something to play games on. Unfortunately, Apple basically said it's a lost cause and they don't support it any more. Many of the things I used to do on it no longer w*rk. Norton says the antivirus no longer w*rks on it either.
Unless you have some specific needs that warrant building a PC, such as a high end gaming setup, I have found building a PC from scratch to not be worth the effort. It may have been years ago when the systems cost more but not any longer. Recently we made the switch so we could run Win11 and went in a very different direction. Rather than replacing my Dell desktop and the wife's Dell laptop with something similar (those are the systems we have for everyday usage in our retirement, and don't need anything high end), we went with mini PCs, specifically the GMKtec brand. Can't believe how much power they have for our needs in a box that is about four inches square and about 2-3 inches in height. Came with 16GB of memory, 1TB SSD, HDMI connector, and three USB ports. I need more than the three ports so I have a USB box running off one of the ports that gives me four additional ports. These little beasts are super quiet; you have to put your ear right down to them to hear anything. They don't heat up and they have been just chugging along for months now without an issue. But the real estate I gained on my desk is significant. Just a suggestion.
Even for a high end or even low/mid end gaming system, building yourself is fine. You can purchase and install the graphics card of your choice or upgrade to a better one if needed. I'm not a gamer, but I don't like delays and hesitations doing things, which happens more with those low end systems. I could just keep my existing self build 4 khz overclocked Sandy Bridge system for that and upgrade to Windows 11 with workarounds.
That pretty much describes why I opt for a mid-range, non-gaming system. A solid graphics card is still useful for things like photo and video editing. But even when multi-tasking applications and browsers, a decent graphics card will offload the demands on the CPU compared to running the on-board graphics processor.
So this is like WINE? WINE worked for me (on Linux) for some basic stuff, but there were a lot of limitations, and stuff that was supposed to work with some tweaking I generally gave up on before I could get it to work.
You could load Linux on that, and it will run like new. Although the games your wife likes may not be available.
If it is Wine I wouldn't waste my time with it. Just run a virtual machine instead.
I decided to go the build route to move my main desktop (tower) to Windows 11. I like to do builds and was looking for a reason to "justify" a new one, at a price below the "don't ask, don't tell" hobby spending Dw and I have
. I am also not a gamer and do not need high end graphics; the built-in CPU graphics works fine for my needs.).
I have found that WINE (with proton, Steam's wine fork, or Lutris with DXVK) runs any Windows game I've tried. In fact, it runs older Windows games better than can be run on whatever current Windows version Microsoft is trying to foist upon the general public.
Yeah, wouldn't have a clue how to even try that. Not quite a Luddite - but close.
I guess I need to be educated. In order to run Windows applications like MS Word/Excel, Adobe Acrobat Standard, etc., plus Linux, is the virtual machine on Windows to run Linux, or is the virtual machine on Linux to run Windows?
