What desktop computer should I get my mom for Christmas?

Get her an iMac. That is what I am on right now. Perfect for storing pictures and music. User friendly.

My current one is 6 years old in December, and still working fine, no complaints. The previous one I had worked well for almost six years, but I didn’t buy with enough memory.

Can you at least give a price range?

@johnpowell

Oh right. Well – I’m thinking $600–700. Anything more expensive tends to be really high-tech gaming computers which is not what she needs (I assume. I could be wrong).

Not sure she would like Macs. She’s been fond of Windows since the dawn of time. The most she ever delved into with Apple was an iPad. I think Windows works better for what she does since it’s more organized with files.

Windows is totally fine. I actually like Windows 10. I tried to switch my mom to a Mac and that was a diaster. And I am typing this on a Mac.

I hate to ask another question but in terms of storage how much are we talking?

There are basically three types of storage in a computer.

The lowest capacity being RAM. I have 16GB of RAM in my computer but it is very fast. RAM is the sticks you plug into your motherboard. RAM is also “volatile”, meaning that if your computer loses power the contents of RAM is lost. For your mom at least 8GB should do. But it is cheap and if you can get 16GB I would. Windows keeps wanting more.

The next tier of storage is “non-volatile”. This is in Windows terms your C drive. These can be of two types.

First type: HDD (Hard Disk Drive).. Commonly referred to as “spinning rust”. These are actually physical spinning disks and slow. But cheap and high capacity.

Second type: SSD (Solid State Drive).. Super fast but low capacity and expensive.

I went through all that because I don’t know how much data we are talking. A 500GB SSD is reasonably priced now and if her data will be less than that I would go SSD.

If we are talking terabytes then you want to go HDD.

You can have Windows and all your applications on a SSD and have a HDD to store your pictures and movies. So kinda the best of both worlds but it is something my mom had a struggle with.

@johnpowell
Yeah I was thinking 16GB RAM.

Hm. I’d really be interested in checking out both 1TB or 500GB. I’m thinking 500 GB but I still would want to check out 1TB.

Heyyyy guysssss

So I gave my mom a Lenovo IdeaCentre 510A – 1TB hard drive and 12 GB RAM AMD A12 Series

I connected everything – monitor, keyboard, mouse, etc. The computer itself turns on – the light goes on and the fan sounds and the CD drive opens and closes. But the monitor keeps saying “Power Saving Mode” and goes to sleep every time I turn on the computer. I tried reconnecting the HDMI cable but the same thing happens. I thought it was the monitor but it seems fine because the monitor says “no connection” whenever I disconnect it from the computer. For some reason, the computer isn’t displaying anything.

NEVER MIND – i got it!

Seems to be a relatively obscure issue with Lenovo IdeaCentres but I used the solution that Lenovo presented here:

https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Lenovo-E-H-K-M-Q-Y-and-ErazerX/IdeaCentre-Monitor-stuck-in-power-saving-mode-CMOS-reset-to/m-p/3351396#M12234

Kind of bothers me though. I shouldn’t have had to do that with a brand new computer. As I was doing it I was like “This probably won’t work but what the hell. .” but it did work.