Time for a new PC - Suggestions and advice welcome

[LogicprObe]

 

Looks around for bow and arrow.................

[Guest Eggcup The Daft]

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/04/intel_meltdown_spectre_bugs_the_registers_annotations/

 

Looks like one of the nasty chip bugs (the harder one to fix and the easier to exploit?) also affects AMD designs.

ARM chips (hence all tablets and phones) ten years old or newer are also affected. Nowhere to hide. I'd put my money on Intel getting fixed chips out, first despite the claims that directors sold their shares before news got out.

 

Most of us will have slower devices in the next two weeks. There will be unpatched Android devices around for years. I wonder if older OSes will be patched as well?

[ThirdDrawerDown]

Some discussion on slashdot and ars technica alleging a massive public relations campaign by Intel to include AMD in the meltdown.  Here's the flavour, for those who don't like to read below the line:

 

Quote

I don't think you understand: Meltdown can only be fixed by replacing your Intel processor. There are mitigation steps in software, but it is not possible to fix.

Flag as Inappropriate

 

•  

  Who will get to market with a fixed CPU, is what I should have said to be unambiguous.

  Whoever that company is may reap huge rewards, even if it's Intel.

   

  • Re:

    AMD already has a "fixed" CPU. Only Intel is affected by Meltdown.
     

    • Re:

      First google hit says AMD is also affected:

      https://www.theinquirer.net/in... [theinquirer.net]

       
       

      • Re:First to market with a fixed CPU gets big rewar (Score:3)

        by bongey ( 974911 ) on Thursday January 04, 2018 @11:29PM (#55866875)

        ******* God Dammit shitel shill, the article is using Shitels PR statement as reference, and you keep posting the same ******* incorrect information. So **** off, I will say it again just stop ******* shilling , here is exactly what AMD said https://www.amd.com/en/corpora... [amd.com] , and what Linus Tovalds said about the god dam PR statement you linked to http://www.businessinsider.com... [businessinsider.com]

 

 

 

 

[LogicprObe]

 

Fake news!!!

[Guest rmpfyf]

On 03/01/2018 at 9:33 AM, Zaphod Beeblebrox said:

My PC (tower case) is a first generation Intel i5, 15GB RAM, yadda, yadda yadda. Anyway, time to update. Here's what it gets used for:

* Windows 7.

* Technical stuff - Audio measurements, drawing, etc.

* Watching videos.

* Playing music.

* Surfing the web, reading emails, talking on SNA. 

* The only game I play (which is not often) is Doom (yeah, the original). Maybe that will change, but games are not a high priority.

 

Here's what I need:

* Three monitor capability (at least one should be 4k). It would be nice to have at least one VGA output (but I could be prepared to retire my old monitor, if necessary). 

* Probably going for a RAID array, or maybe unRAID: 

https://lime-technology.com/

* All the usual USB ports etc.

* Room for internal expansion.

* SSD boot drive.

 

Some suggestions would be welcome:

 

* Where to buy (in Sydney)

* Gen 7 or gen 8 i5 processor? I understand the gen 8 requires a new MB. Problem?

* Build a system, or buy off the shelf and adapt (it seems that it may be cheaper to buy off the shelf)?

* Any other suggestions will be welcome. 

 

 

Like 2009 i5? Wow. Those were big in the day. 

 

Honestly what you're doing is going to be fine on 16GB RAM and a 4th-gen i3. There's really not much CPU required.

 

You can get a PCIe adapter into an NVMe M.2 SSD for <$40. The same SSD @Keith_W mentioned is good, though I don't know that you'd need 500GB to boot off... that's insane. I'd save your biscuits and go for the 250GB version - costs pretty much half as much - as if you're running what you're running and needing more than 120GB of SSD you're doing something wrong. Plenty for an OS, apps and swap. No, it's not an Optane but unless the jump from 100MB/s to 2.2GB/s on read speeds isn't quick enough for you you're not really going to have an issue. With a separate PCIe card @Eggcup The Daft's correct 4x suggestion is easy to meet (he's right, not all motherboards support this). Save the change to the 500GB version and get yourself a fast spinner for local storage, MSY is currently doing Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 4TB for $154. Not fast enough? $139 will get you a Firecuda 2TB (hybrid SSD/HDD). I'd personally take the 250GB NVMe SSD/4TB HDD (or less) option. $350 (or less if you can do with less storage).

 

Three monitor capability depends how fast you want to go. In NVIDIA-land, reliable 3-monitor support starts at ~$380 for a 1060, though that's a fast card and you can mine cryptocurrency with it in your spare time. In the real world 3-monitor starts with two cards that can support 2 monitors, and if you've spare PCIe slots you can run a second card easy, and it doesn't have to be expensive unless you want to do superfast things with it (play games at 1080p 50fps 3-monitor... ie not Doom). Don't worry about the outputs, adapters are under $10 out of MSY. You'll support your VGA monitor no worries. I just gave away an old Quadro 2000 that would have done two monitors, bugger, that'd have saved you a little. $150 will get you two-monitor support in a new card (GTX 1050 GPU, which will futureproof you for a while), start there. 

 

If your case is big enough, it's big enough. If not get something new. We use Fractal Designs in our builds, they make some awesome kit with all the isolation, filtering and fan requirements @Muon N' suggests, and all the HDD/optical space you need. If your current tower is fine, use that. Check out the Fractal Design Define R5 if towers are your thing ($159).

 

Don't freak out about USB ports, if you don't find enough just add a card or a hub... USB is designed to be expanded by hub. It's a serial bus. If you want to get audiophile-serious, get an audiophile card... otherwise just remove all other USB devices and shut down the excess ports. 

 

Once you have space to hold HDD's simply add your drives and configure RAID. Either WD Reds or Seagate IronWolfs to size and taste will do. Configure a soft RAID in s'ware and then just share that volume across your network. If you're planning on leaving it on all the time though consider a proper NAS - it'll use a good bit less power - up to $100/year, if that matters to you. If you're not holding more than 1TB of stuff to backup for security, consider Dropbox Pro - they handle all the redundancy and it's offsite just in case something should happen to your PC. 

I tend to run expensive PSUs because our PCs are often processing stuff overnight, I hate noise and the efficiency difference to a platinum PSU pays itself off. Up to you. Again, unless there's something you need to do which your current PSU doesn't, keep it. Even then there's always someone flogging something they'd bought and don't need that's pretty kickass... saves a buck or two and limits e-waste. 850W is huge, don't need that for this. $150 is a decent budget here for something new though I'd be looking s/h (again... I just gave away two older units that'd have worked prolly just fine for you).

 

Forget water cooling. We run our compute machines 24/7 on Noctua CPU fan kits at around $50-60 ea, they're practically silent and 4 years on have had zero failures. 

 

16MB of RAM is going to be fine.

 

As for the rest consider doing it in 2nd hand bits... sound like there's very little you do that needs new new new.

[Keith_W]

The reason I choose SSD's which are as large as possible is because SSD's slow down dramatically as they fill up. It actually brings your system down to a crawl. Admittedly my experience comes from back when I had a 64GB SSD as the sole drive on my laptop, and before TRIM support was widely standardized. These days for good measure I specify an SSD which is twice the size of what I think I will need, to leave plenty of space for all the junk that I will probably install on my PC. 

[Guest Muon N']

I agree that 16GB or RAM is more than plenty.

 

Also a quality 500w PSU would also be plenty.

 

I wouldn't use used parts for a new build, but that's just my preference.

[Guest Eggcup The Daft]

16 hours ago, ThirdDrawerDown said:

Some discussion on slashdot and ars technica alleging a massive public relations campaign by Intel to include AMD in the meltdown.  Here's the flavour, for those who don't like to read below the line:

 

 

 

 

 

AMD chips are not affected by Meltdown. They are affected by Spectre. Intel are trying to obfuscate by claiming that they are effectively the same issue (and in a way they are). AMD are claiming a "near zero chance of exploitation" for one vulnerability and hoping it will go away, and trying to say that only Intel are really affected.

 

They are both wrong, and both have a lot of work to do to produce chips that run at comparable speeds without these vulnerabilities. Spectre is harder to exploit, but also harder to mitigate against (the OS can theoretically be bypassed by a bad application) and reports say that it is harder to design out of chips, meaning that AMD don't get a head start by not having to deal with Meltdown in new designs as well).

 

For the record, a related and unfixed vulnerability exists in the FireWire standard, which is in turn written into the Thunderbolt standard, so even with these patches in place, any machine with a Thunderbolt port can be hacked in in a similar way by adding a hardware driver (though Apple have made it hard to install such a driver, at least). Demonstration hacks required a physical device, but it is possible to add a virtual device to complete the hack, at least in theory. Modern FireWire drivers don't generally use kernel access for this reason.

Edited January 6, 2018 by Eggcup The Daft

[Guest Eggcup The Daft]

1 hour ago, Keith_W said:

The reason I choose SSD's which are as large as possible is because SSD's slow down dramatically as they fill up. It actually brings your system down to a crawl. Admittedly my experience comes from back when I had a 64GB SSD as the sole drive on my laptop, and before TRIM support was widely standardized. These days for good measure I specify an SSD which is twice the size of what I think I will need, to leave plenty of space for all the junk that I will probably install on my PC. 

SSD's don't slow down as much as they used to as they fill up. A larger SSD can be important in some other circumstances though. If an application uses a large scratch file (no audio processing application does this, but some drawing packages go over the top on it) it will place it on the SSD by default in the user temp folder, and for speed that's where you want it.

 

I strongly recommend mirroring for the second hard drive. I learnt that the hard way (and hadn't noticed that auto backup had failed five days before, to make things worse). One other piece of advice with this sort of setup is to regularly take a system image of the SSD, and to do so before making any major changes. It's the fastest way to get up and running again in case it fails.

[Guest rmpfyf]

TRIM is now widely used correctly. 

 

A bloated Win OS + key apps + swap/scratch isn't going to exceed 120GB. If you need more swap just get more RAM, which gives more performance than any SSD anyway. 250GB fine. Junk does not belong on an SSD unless there's $ to burn or the SSD is free. If Amazon, Google and the rest can get by running near-countless data servers storing our junk in-cloud on HDD not SSD so can we.

 

There are very few applications on the planet requiring SSD's greater than 250GB; this doesn't sound like one. Save the money, get a good spinner to sit with it. A nightly/weekly mirror is a very smart idea (I'd tend to put it on a NAS instead, though having one anywhere is better than not). There are some speed advantages depending how an SSD is constructed that can be inherent on size, though even a little 250GB is going to be miles ahead. Just did a HPC machine with a boot/scratch on a 250GB Samsung 950 EVO... customer came in whingeing it wasn't the latest 960, went out realising it was nearly 16 times quicker on some performance benchmarks than his you-beaut SSHD. Perspective rules.

 

In *nix operating systems you can mount a disk under a directory such that navigating through multiple drives is seamless as you go through a file structure, I'm not sure how you'd do this in Windows though there's got to be some way of doing it that doesn't feel cumbersome. 

 

 

[LogicprObe]

 

I think an M2 boot drive of around 500GB is fine...............it's easy to forget to store things on the spinners and fill up the SSD.

Zaph is keen on data preservation so a redundant array is probably essential.

[sloper]

l have seen RAID systems fail by stupidity and machines being totaled.

 

Stupidity, ignoring HD failures till data was lost.

 

Totaled machine's, fire, theft and a axe through a machine.

 

l mirror data on a extra HD in my PC, my backup PC and two PC's offsite that l control.

l have also seen a cloud system fail and l dont trust goverment agencies.

Am l paranoid.

 

regards Bruce

[Guest Eggcup The Daft]

3 hours ago, rmpfyf said:

If you need more swap just get more RAM, which gives more performance than any SSD anyway.

 

Disk read/write is a key part of any OS. If you were right with this comment, at least perceptually on an end user machine, then we would perceive 64GB and a standard hard drive was quicker than OS and apps on an SSD with 16 or 32GB. That definitely isn't the case. For constantly running background applications, and the sort of thing that runs in many datacentres, on the other hand, more RAM is more important. And more RAM tends to mean more swap space and a bigger hibernation file (these can both be managed/reduced or removed in Windows of course, but messing with the swapfile often results in reduced performance with desktop apps that expect it). That's the nature of Windows. You can manage these things more easily in other OSes without suddenly finding yourself in unexpected trouble.

 

3 hours ago, rmpfyf said:

If Amazon, Google and the rest can get by running near-countless data servers storing our junk in-cloud on HDD not SSD so can we.

 

True. But they also use SSDs for items in regular use and requiring fast access.

 

3 hours ago, rmpfyf said:

Save the money, get a good spinner to sit with it.

 

Get two and mirror. You never know when a spinning drive is going to fail early. Assume the worst. I didn't and....

 

Data is always harder to replace than the OS.

 

3 hours ago, rmpfyf said:

In *nix operating systems you can mount a disk under a directory such that navigating through multiple drives is seamless as you go through a file structure, I'm not sure how you'd do this in Windows though there's got to be some way of doing it that doesn't feel cumbersome. 

 

 

Mount points:

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc753321(v=ws.11).aspx

 

Many Windows users from earlier times prefer to see the data drive separately because that's what they had in the past. It also makes backing up the SSD boot drive a lot easier if you don't use a mount point, and that's what I recommend for getting back up quickly, as I said above. If Windows didn't insist on per-user application temp folders, I might think differently on that matter and force the user folders onto the rotating drive. For some users I force parts of the user folders over anyway: but I've seen Windows desktop folders on secondary and network drives do enough to slow machines down massively, so often it's just best to use the bigger system drive and let Windows and the end user do what they want, no matter how stupid it seems at first sight.

 

 

[Guest Eggcup The Daft]

9 minutes ago, sloper said:

l have seen RAID systems fail by stupidity and machines being totaled.

 

Stupidity, ignoring HD failures till data was lost.

 

Totaled machine's, fire, theft and a axe through a machine.

 

l mirror data on a extra HD in my PC, my backup PC and two PC's offsite that l control.

l have also seen a cloud system fail and l dont trust goverment agencies.

Am l paranoid.

 

regards Bruce

Better safe than sorry. The big boys mirror their cloud systems these days of course... didn't the US government hack the cables that Google used in their cross centre backup routines at one point?

[Guest rmpfyf]

@Eggcup The Daft points taken, would offer the following, 

 

Even in Windows it's possible to run the OS without a swap. Whilst I don't personally recommend it for Windows, the best swap is a small swap. FWIW we've a number of Wintel, Linux and MacOS machines, some of which intentionally run without swap just fine. Some programs will set their own swap that's deliberately on a mounted partition - which is usually a fixed disk somewhere - though again, these tend to venture into it when allocate memory is exhausted. The very nature of swap is something to be used when allocable memory is exhausted, whether set in OS or by a program. MS themselves recommend swap to be less than the total size of installed RAM. If you are running out of RAM and into swap on a 16GB system, get more RAM. More RAM implies more swap space if you are using more RAM, not simply because you might have it. This is a horses-for-courses argument - there's nothing to suggest here that the OP needs more than 16GB, which implies a very small swap size, which implies a 500GB SSD on grounds of 'more swap' is significant overkill, even if including OS page, a few apps doing the same and hibernation space.

 

The majors do indeed use SSDs where speed is of essence. Most of the OP's volume requirements don't involve speed, just storage.

 

Don't get two local and mirror, get a NAS and put them there. Or do it offsite. The cost difference btw the size of the SSDs involved will pay for one of them at least.

 

Thanks for the mount point link. I can't see how it makes backing up any easier or harder, and I can't see why you'd set a boot drive as a mount point of something else... was more suggesting that a HDD would sit off a mount point of a boot SSD. For backup or cloning, anything beyond the mount point is simply excluded.

 

OP application sounds like a single-user environment.

[crisis]

Ive built a few and Im no expert. I buy all of my gear from MSY. Generally google to see whats what when the build comes up and buy what i need. If you don't need a speccy video card it wont be an expensive build. Definitely put the operating system on a SSD. Everything is pretty cheap these days.

[Guest Eggcup The Daft]

30 minutes ago, rmpfyf said:

@Eggcup The Daft points taken, would offer the following, 

 

Even in Windows it's possible to run the OS without a swap. Whilst I don't personally recommend it for Windows, the best swap is a small swap. FWIW we've a number of Wintel, Linux and MacOS machines, some of which intentionally run without swap just fine. Some programs will set their own swap that's deliberately on a mounted partition - which is usually a fixed disk somewhere - though again, these tend to venture into it when allocate memory is exhausted. The very nature of swap is something to be used when allocable memory is exhausted, whether set in OS or by a program. MS themselves recommend swap to be less than the total size of installed RAM. If you are running out of RAM and into swap on a 16GB system, get more RAM. More RAM implies more swap space if you are using more RAM, not simply because you might have it. This is a horses-for-courses argument - there's nothing to suggest here that the OP needs more than 16GB, which implies a very small swap size, which implies a 500GB SSD on grounds of 'more swap' is significant overkill, even if including OS page, a few apps doing the same and hibernation space.

 

The majors do indeed use SSDs where speed is of essence. Most of the OP's volume requirements don't involve speed, just storage.

 

Don't get two local and mirror, get a NAS and put them there. Or do it offsite. The cost difference btw the size of the SSDs involved will pay for one of them at least.

 

Thanks for the mount point link. I can't see how it makes backing up any easier or harder, and I can't see why you'd set a boot drive as a mount point of something else... was more suggesting that a HDD would sit off a mount point of a boot SSD. For backup or cloning, anything beyond the mount point is simply excluded.

 

OP application sounds like a single-user environment.

I use system images to back up the SSD (this takes a snapshot of the drive). It does things by drive, and so if you set the HDD as a mount point in the SSD, the system image tool sometimes tries to copy the HDD as well and gets confused. You could always use Clonezilla or similar booting from a USB drive, instead, of course.

 

Windows sometimes uses the swapfile even when a large amount of RAM is free. On a standalone end user machine I would just let Windows get on with it rather than messing with the default settings. It really does go wrong less often that way.

[Guest rmpfyf]

46 minutes ago, Eggcup The Daft said:

I use system images to back up the SSD (this takes a snapshot of the drive). It does things by drive, and so if you set the HDD as a mount point in the SSD, the system image tool sometimes tries to copy the HDD as well and gets confused. You could always use Clonezilla or similar booting from a USB drive, instead, of course.

 

Windows sometimes uses the swapfile even when a large amount of RAM is free. On a standalone end user machine I would just let Windows get on with it rather than messing with the default settings. It really does go wrong less often that way.

Clonezilla is some of the most useful software ever written

 

@crisis I love MSY. Does anyone still use www.staticice.com.au for price hunting?

[LogicprObe]

5 hours ago, sloper said:

l have seen RAID systems fail by stupidity and machines being totaled.

 

Stupidity, ignoring HD failures till data was lost.

 

Totaled machine's, fire, theft and a axe through a machine.

 

l mirror data on a extra HD in my PC, my backup PC and two PC's offsite that l control.

l have also seen a cloud system fail and l dont trust goverment agencies.

Am l paranoid.

 

regards Bruce

 

It's not paranoia if they really are after you, Bruce.................

[LogicprObe]

2 hours ago, rmpfyf said:

Clonezilla is some of the most useful software ever written

 

@crisis I love MSY. Does anyone still use www.staticice.com.au for price hunting?

 

Staticice is still the best..............even though google is trying to kill it.

MSY is a pain in the arse for standing in line and warranty claims.

Stuff saving $2 on a part...............and their stock is usually woeful.

Not to mention that everything is invoiced through China, thus avoiding the GST......................or has that all changed now?

[Guest rmpfyf]

58 minutes ago, LogicprObe said:

MSY is a pain in the arse for standing in line and warranty claims.

Stuff saving $2 on a part...............and their stock is usually woeful.

Not to mention that everything is invoiced through China, thus avoiding the GST......................or has that all changed now?

 

Oh, I think every MSY idiosyncrasy is charm  our local MSY has a bit of a 'Soup Nazi'-type character... it can get hilarious in there. 

 

Though yeah... anything I buy that I might actually need to lean on for an RMA claim doesn't get bought through MSY unless manufacturers will deal with me directly. Had a very pleasant interaction with a vendor down here in VIC around a Synology NAS that was near the very end of the warranty period... there's good vendors out there. 

 

Would wonder if Amazon (Australia) is now of any use for PC parts?

[crisis]

2 hours ago, LogicprObe said:

MSY is a pain in the arse for standing in line and warranty claims.

Stuff saving $2 on a part...............and their stock is usually woeful.

Not to mention that everything is invoiced through China, thus avoiding the GST......................or has that all changed now?

Both of the MSY outlets I use are fine. I've never had to go back for a warranty claim and they always have stock of what ever Ive wanted.

As rmpfyf said there is a certain idiosyncrasy with dealing with them. Very soup nazi like. You pick up the price list. Walk up to the counter and point to the product you wish to purchase. ;-)

[kukynas]

@Zaphod Beeblebrox  reuse as much as you can, tower would be first to reuse unless there's something wrong with it, few things I would consider:

 

1. NVMe SSD disk, I would buy mobo with native support not through PCI-e or adapters (price, size, etc.), in terms of size it depends on your future use but I would buy at least 250GB, not only because of spare space but also speed, bigger sizes have faster speed

2. 16GB RAM should be enough for any app or game these days, type depended on your mobo

3. G-card, if you don't plan to play today's or future games GTX1050Ti would be my pick, it's cheaper than 1060 but nearly as fast and should be sufficient for your monitors

4. Mobo, chipset depended based on your future CPU but look at those with native NVMe socket

5. CPU, if you don't need blazing speed for today's games or huge computing power for specific operations any 6th gen onwards will be enough

6. PSU, depended on your budget and needs, if you can reuse I would do so, if you need low noise and it's critical for you than below my pick

7. Storage, I would use SSD only for OS and apps, nothing else, for backup and storage standard HDD, external storage or NAS should be sufficient, it's cheaper and with RAID more reliable

8. Cooling, unless you plan to buy gaming GPU with K or server range CPU I wouldn't bother with water cooling, you can achieve the same with fanless solution as mentioned bellow or with very little noise using Noctua coolers

9. Monitors and peripherals, I assume you can reuse all or most of them, if not let us know which you'd like to change

 

My current pick would be following:

 

1. Samsung 960 EVO 250GB

2. 2x 8GB Kingston DDR4 2400MHz CL17 or equivalent

3. Palit GeForce GTX 1050 Ti KalmX (fanless) or equivalent

4. GIGABYTE Z370 AORUS Gaming K3, not because of gamming features but because of very good audio chip and better USB chip (see below) and it's pretty cheap for gaming type mobo

5. Intel core i3-8100, yes i3, it's faster and 30% cheaper than previous generation i5-7400 model

6. Corsair RM-550X low noise (electrically) or reuse your current one if you don't need low noise PSU

8. SilentiumPC Fortis 3 HE1425 v2 or Cooler Master Hyper 612 ver.2, you can run both fanless, it has enough cooper and aluminum to cool down above mentioned CPU in passive mode, GPU is fanless

 

On ‎05‎.‎01‎.‎2018 at 3:42 AM, Eggcup The Daft said:

Finally, some of the more expensive "gamer" boards (I have one) and now some standard boards as well, have special "audio" USB sockets and much higher S/N ratios on their internal audio. Some of them even sound good with the better internal Realtek chips. The special audio USB sockets are mainly about better power regulation, and with a couple of different DACs I heard little or no difference (that of course is my bias), so don't think I'm going all audiophile here - the point is that for ADC and other USB input devices these USB sockets have been demonstrated to give lower noise, so for measurement such an input is worth considering.

 

I guess I'll get it in the neck for that last paragraph...

 

not at all, I'm 200% with you, I was shocked when I heard new AL1150 chip from Realtek for the first time, unbelievable what they've been able to achieve soundwise, I don't use my external DAC anymore, it's nearly as good but easier to operate and has enough power to drive my Senns, latest AL1220 used in above mentioned mobo should be even better, better SNR for DAC (120db) and ADC (114db) and support DSD up to 128

 

[stereo coffee]

My advice would be not to get tied up in proprietary operating systems,

as the hardware you then use becomes redundant in very little time. and

has restrictions which are the exact opposite of free software, namely

you are not free to run, copy,distribute, study, change and improve the software.

If you want these restrictions - that is up to you.

 

I have used Linux since 2003 and never regretted it. Linux Mint is a 

good place to start  http://www.linuxmint.com

but many flavors here  http://distrowatch.com

 

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

“Free software” means software that respects users' freedom and community. Roughly, it means that the users have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. Thus, “free software” is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of “free” as in “free speech,” not as in “free beer”. We sometimes call it “libre software,” borrowing the French or Spanish word for “free” as in freedom, to show we do not mean the software is gratis. "

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

Thanks to all who contributed to this thread. I really appreciate it. So much excellent information and advice. I will sift through it and make my purchase in the next month or so.