in these days of not stealing music and films and games and sandwich makers over the internet, some people will find that they do not need an external hard drive.

as one of these people, I've decided not to buy an external hard drive, even if this http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?Module...2&DOY=4m2&c=dow does seem like good value.

I also noted this 500gb model, and will avoid it like any other:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/o/ASIN/B000EXZB0M/...7755616-1274213

Nice find gullit4, will see if I have any funds left

Is there a particular reason why you want an external hard drive? Portability? Have a laptop?

If you are simply looking for expanded storage you are much better off just getting an internal hard drive. A 400GB Seagate SATA hard drive is down to about $120 or $130 these days. Almost 3.0 Gbps as compared to the wimpy 480 Mbps transfer of USB 2.0.

I want one to share data (without home-networking) between the PC and the laptop.

Anyone else on Vista yet? Am pleasantly surprised!!

Matt,

What puts me off Vista, is all the bugs that came about when XP came out.

Could that happen again with this?

I plan not to dive into Vista for sometime yet until everyone knows where we are with it. I got XP the day it came out, and had probs with it at the start.

But what I've seen, looks good.

Looks good - I've had it in test version for about 2 months now and have yet to get a crash it. It's more secure than any Windows platform I've used before and I don't think large Service Packs (such as XP SP2) will be an issue. It all seems to be Windows Updates driven.

The install was the easiest Windows install I've ever done (am old enough to remember 3.11!) and nearly all the drivers were done on install - only one I think I had to go and find was the one for the webcam.

Due to the improved graphics it is more resource hungry than XP, but if you have a machine that is 2-3 years old with about 1Gb of RAM you will be fine.

I've heard very mixed views on it, not to mention the space it swallows.

I can't see myself jumping to Vista anytime in the next year or more. Most of the features that would have made Vista revolutionary were axed to get it out the door (e.g. WinFS).

Maybe once SP1 comes out, DX10 is launched and DX10 compatible video cards get affordable I'll consider it.

Is there a particular reason why you want an external hard drive? Portability? Have a laptop?

I swap between a few external drives cos my board isn't a SATA one and I already have 4 drives attached internally.

Vista... I think... if you're getting the Home Basic version, don't bother (unless of course it comes with the laptop, then it's fine ). I'm definitely not making the jump yet but the minimum anyone should switch to should be the Home Premium...

yeah, portability is the main thing- I got a 500gb one earlier today...

what are the main selling points of vista, and can you download it? just for research, obviously.

Maybe once SP1 comes out, DX10 is launched and DX10 compatible video cards get affordable I'll consider it.

Same goes for me.

Vista RC2 was widely available for download. Now that the final version has hit retail outlets I doubt that it's still available from Microsoft...but I'm sure torrents of it are still floating around everywhere.

Am on Ultimate - work are a Microsoft Developer and so I had to update the laptop they issued to me.

so where can I check my ram? somewhere on the computer?

oh, nd updating won't affect anything I have, right?

so where can I check my ram? somewhere on the computer?

oh, nd updating won't affect anything I have, right?

Right click on 'My Computer' - select properties and it will tell you at the bottom

thanks, and bah, 512mb ram.

not good enough for vista I presume? (I've enough memory though...) 3.06 ghz...

so, is there a way of "updating" the processor... without, obviously, buying a new computer.

You might only need another 256 / 512 - try Insight for prices. Reckon it'll only be about ?30.

g4 the 3.06ghz is the processor. That's fine. You'd be looking at increasing memory (aka RAM).

yeah i just added that in case it was also relevant info.

Fine. Well your 3.06ghz is more than sufficient for now. You can just leave that. Although that said, if I remember correctly your computer's a Dell, so if you're going to do anything just trash it and buy a new one.

Adding RAM won't hurt any of your existing files, settings, programs, or anything. Just pop open the case to see how many DIMMs (memory modules) your motherboard can accept. On some older computers you used to have to add RAM in pairs or put certain ones in certain slots. I don't think that's the case for anything these days, thankfully...

If you add RAM the only thing you're likely to have to do is enter the BIOS once the first time you boot it up, exit and save everything, reboot. Good to go from then on.