Ok, so the Dell Inspiron 620s seems to finally be deadski

I primarily use it to stream video, do work on genealogy sites, read the news, and send emails. I also do my online banking and play movies from discs on it.  Quite often I am streaming music while doing other things online. The Daughter uses it as a word processor for her papers and also does some photoshop stuff with images she takes on her digital camera (to include with her papers).

I'm assuming that since  Gandalf was working ok for her that she'd be ok with it on an i5 processor as long as I got enough RAM (like 8GB).  There are some reconditioned Dells on Amazon for between 125 and 150 pounds. I am leaning towards getting one of those, as right now I'm on my little Windows 7 laptop and really don't want to think about trying to get things done if this one goes down as well!

She is adamant that she "doesn't want a Windows 10 machine in the house" but I want to be sure I can still do my online banking and stuff. Especially since they're going to drop Windows 7 support in January. She has a Windows 8 laptop and hates it, so she uses my two instead. Or, rather, the remaining one.  The alternative is finding someone to troubleshoot and then fix Gandalf. Which would, I think, cost more than just buying a reconditioned machine with a one-year Amazon warranty on it.

I primarily use it to stream video, do work on genealogy sites, read the news, and send emails. I also do my online banking and play movies from discs on it.  Quite often I am streaming music while doing other things online. The Daughter uses it as a word processor for her papers and also does some photoshop stuff with images she takes on her digital camera (to include with her papers).

I'm assuming that since  Gandalf was working ok for her that she'd be ok with it on an i5 processor as long as I got enough RAM (like 8GB).  There are some reconditioned Dells on Amazon for between 125 and 150 pounds. I am leaning towards getting one of those, as right now I'm on my little Windows 7 laptop and really don't want to think about trying to get things done if this one goes down as well!

She is adamant that she "doesn't want a Windows 10 machine in the house" but I want to be sure I can still do my online banking and stuff. Especially since they're going to drop Windows 7 support in January. She has a Windows 8 laptop and hates it, so she uses my two instead. Or, rather, the remaining one.  The alternative is finding someone to troubleshoot and then fix Gandalf. Which would, I think, cost more than just buying a reconditioned machine with a one-year Amazon warranty on it.

If she doesn't want windows10 what about Linux? You can do all of those things on it now

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If your old computer did the job and you have the spare time, you could put more effort into fixing it.  You could take it into the local repair shop and get an estimate, or find a subreddit where they are skilled at troubleshooting.  Whatever part you need should be cheap.

If your daughter is basing her hatred of win 10 on using win 8, that's not an accurate comparison.  Win 10 is fine and way better than 8. But I respect her right to choose.   Linux is free, Mac is not. I had a super nice Mac laptop from my last client. I liked it at first, but later I found it super annoying.

No clue about why she doesn't like 10. Or, rather, I can't remember. She has told me repeatedly.  Something to do with all its phoning home and taking choice away. I think.

Yes, I'd love to get Gandalf fixed. What I'm seeing locally is that it's fifty pounds just to diagnose him. I also do not have a recommendation from anyone we know of a reputable repair service. The ones we see from being out and around town look sketchy as hell. I also do not trust online reviews, as they can be artificially stacked.  So until we have a recommendation from someone who has actually used a repair place, I am not really comfortable with leaving my machine with one.

Assuming we eventually get a viable diagnosis, then there's the workman cost and the part cost. If I can get a working replacement machine for just over twice what a diagnosis alone costs, I may do so and then deal with getting him fixed later. It looks as if a replacement power supply would also be between 40 and 50 pounds. I have had the back off the machine and looked to see how it was plugged in, and am not sure I can easily replace it myself. I did upgrade the memory on my last machine, but there were no wires attached running all over the place with that!

Question - The Daughter really hates the Windows 8 machine. Can it be wiped and Linux put on it?  Alternately, what is required to put Linux on a PC in terms of hardware? Can any PC be made to use Linux? (She has talked about wanting to do that for years.)

No clue about why she doesn't like 10. Or, rather, I can't remember. She has told me repeatedly.  Something to do with all its phoning home and taking choice away. I think.

Yes, I'd love to get Gandalf fixed. What I'm seeing locally is that it's fifty pounds just to diagnose him. I also do not have a recommendation from anyone we know of a reputable repair service. The ones we see from being out and around town look sketchy as hell. I also do not trust online reviews, as they can be artificially stacked.  So until we have a recommendation from someone who has actually used a repair place, I am not really comfortable with leaving my machine with one.

Assuming we eventually get a viable diagnosis, then there's the workman cost and the part cost. If I can get a working replacement machine for just over twice what a diagnosis alone costs, I may do so and then deal with getting him fixed later. It looks as if a replacement power supply would also be between 40 and 50 pounds. I have had the back off the machine and looked to see how it was plugged in, and am not sure I can easily replace it myself. I did upgrade the memory on my last machine, but there were no wires attached running all over the place with that!

Question - The Daughter really hates the Windows 8 machine. Can it be wiped and Linux put on it?  Alternately, what is required to put Linux on a PC in terms of hardware? Can any PC be made to use Linux? (She has talked about wanting to do that for years.)

Can definitely have Linux installed on her windows 8 machine, you could even set it to dual-boot so if she needs to use windows for something at school she still has it as a backup. I think Ubuntu is generally the easiest to use if you're not a tech fiend. My husband loves programming so he goes for the most difficult

If you need a solid desktop for all the things you listed, honestly technology has advanced so much since 2011 it's probably worth an upgrade. I just replaced my laptop (an old mac) and the difference in speed of everything and graphics are significant. I went for a slightly more robust one because of my needs, but even a basic model with 8GB Ram will make you happier. There are some settings on windows10 that need to be disabled for privacy and updates but it's not as bad as people were initially afraid of.

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I've bought one of those reconditioned machines from Amazon for a couple of hundred quid and was dissapointed.  It was old and slow and started to crash all the time when sleeping.  Yes it still had a warranty, but the hassle of trying to enforce that was more than it was worth.  After a year or two we threw it away. 

How about one of the barebones options like this from Novatech for £169?

https://www.novatech.co.uk/barebonebundles/view/bb-95004f.html

Pay extra for more RAM, put Linux on it and you are ready to go.  And you've got Oliver you can call and ask any questions.

Don't forget, you would like to be able to plug in the hard disk from your old computer.  Be sure that your new computer has space for the extra drive and compatible connectors.

OK, so I found a place that says they'd do a free diagnostics. Unfortunately it means a bus then train then bus ride to get there, and then back again with a big PC in my arms. So, I've gritted my teeth and am playing the odds - I ordered a replacement power supply. If it works, worth it. If not... will deal with that later. I have looked in the case again and realized that the big bundle of wires is actually just tied together. If untied, it should not be too difficult to replace the PSU and then tie them all back again.  Fingers are crossed. 

Edit:  Ok, so watching youtube 'how to' videos. One said to pull the battery and drain all power, then without the battery see if it would power up. It does!  So I'm to the step where you have the battery out and it unplugged and drained. I'm to wait an hour and then put the battery back in and if it starts to come up to intercept it with F2 to get to the Bios to switch something to off. And then to restart the computer normally.  I hope this works! (I can also then hopefully intercept the power supply before it ships!)

OK, so I found a place that says they'd do a free diagnostics. Unfortunately it means a bus then train then bus ride to get there, and then back again with a big PC in my arms. So, I've gritted my teeth and am playing the odds - I ordered a replacement power supply. If it works, worth it. If not... will deal with that later. I have looked in the case again and realized that the big bundle of wires is actually just tied together. If untied, it should not be too difficult to replace the PSU and then tie them all back again.  Fingers are crossed. 

Edit:  Ok, so watching youtube 'how to' videos. One said to pull the battery and drain all power, then without the battery see if it would power up. It does!  So I'm to the step where you have the battery out and it unplugged and drained. I'm to wait an hour and then put the battery back in and if it starts to come up to intercept it with F2 to get to the Bios to switch something to off. And then to restart the computer normally.  I hope this works! (I can also then hopefully intercept the power supply before it ships!)

Fingers crossed!   
 

So far it's working! 

Have put the "sleep" setting back to what they used to be and will see if it will go to sleep and then wake up normally.

Ok, it will not wake from overnight sleep, but will wake if it's only been asleep a short time. I have all the settings for hybrid sleep and hibernate "off" but it apparently is still hibernating.  SO, I've told it to never go to sleep and we'll just power it down overnight. It comes up and is working fine from "power off" state. 

Still going to keep an eye out for a new machine, maybe Black Friday will be good this year. I'd get a way better deal in the States, though. We may go back for a visit in the Spring and maybe I can pick something up then. Either way, until then I have my lifeline to the world back. It was reeeeallly bothering me knowing I might get cut off from all my correspondents and just be stuck in this flat with nothing to do but housework and the telly every day!

So, we powered it off and it will not power up. Time to say RIP. (Or stuff it in the closet until I can find someone to diagnose it.)

Have been on my Windows 7 Dell Latitude since then. Works great. VPN stopped working, had to download an updated one from Proton. Still wasn't working. Checked to see the status of the Windows updates, per Proton guy. Turns out the Daughter, who had been using it for her schoolwork, had turned off auto updates. And nothing had been updated since Dec 2017. There were 182 updates waiting. That just took me two days and some fiddling and research, since periodically one would fail. So anyway it's updated and the VPN is now installed and works. So I can limp along on that one.

Have it out in 'the office' for the Daughter to use. So she let me hook up her Windows 8 so I can stream video and surf and do my genealogy. Have it hooked up here at my desk as if it was a desktop - keyboard, mouse, big monitor, external speakers, external hard drive. It's working just fine. For grins I checked to see if she'd been updating it since the VPN wasn't working. 2014. Seriously, 2014. Five years of updates in the que. So, I did those, too. No more support for it unless she upgrades to 8.1, but she says she doesn't want to because she's heard its even more of a train wreck than 8 was. Proton doesn't support VPN on Windows 8 machines, but has sent me instructions for a work-around. That I will deal with some other day when my brain stops hurting. I asked her if she'd ever done backups and she said no, so I created a couple of restore USBs and a repair disk and then did a mirror image of the machine onto my big hard drive. (Oy.) So if it breaks, we may be able to fix it.

Having been on this Windows 8 machine for a couple of days, I don't have much of a problem with it, other than it's a bit slow. Not sure what she doesn't like about it. I know she hates Windows 10 because she says they took administrator rights away from the user. But when I was doing all my Windows 7 research-to-fix-failed-updates it certainly looks as if you can go in and diddle with Windows 10 as you can with Windows 7?

Yeah, I think your daughter is mistaken about windows 10 honestly. It is different, but you have all the same admin rights if you are the administrator. Some settings are more hidden but you can still do pretty much everything needed especially as a home user.

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