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Recommendations for 2nd hand AIO PC

cj66

pfm Member
Really appealing to PC bods or experienced users.
Opening a new site where we'll need a PC to handle simple tasks, internet, office etc., nothing too rigorous.

I'm looking at Windows AIO i3/i5 units that either have or can be easily upgraded to 8GB Ram and SSD (disc or M.2 format) and not too ancient.
One of our sites has a Lenovo 520 which is good enough but a bitch to open and didn't take a standard 2.5" drive converter sled, I had to fashion one which was a PITA. I also find the Lenovo machine specs unreliable, this same machine was listed as M.2 but in reality was not.

Waddya fink?
 
Does it have to be an all-in-one? They are always more expensive and more of a pain to upgrade, rarely come up refurbished or secondhand. I would go for a small form factor new PC and monitor.
 
I hear you but they're expensive over here, even building your own is very uneconomic.
 
There are alternatives to an AIO. For example I am writing this response on a 2012 i7 Mac Mini with 8GB ram and both a 1TB HDD and a 250GB SSD thats running Windows 11 Pro. A few years back we went on a river cruise and every cabin was equipped with a Mac Mini hidden on a shelf below a large monitor that ran 24*7 for all services including surfing the net.

Thats just to give an example. If its for business then I'd buy new something like a Lenovo ThinkCentre M70q Tiny PC. These are powerful but very small PCs that can actually be mounted on the rear of a monitor out of sight using their VESA mount kit. This gives you something like an AIO but a lot more flexible and accessible. Have a look here ThinkCentre M70q Gen 3 Tiny (Intel) | Compact, powerful 1L PC | Lenovo UK

DV
 
+1 on the NUC, fantastic bits of kit and as DV says you can put them on the back of the monitor securely with a VESA mount
 
Both dell and HP do lovely little form factor ones, dell even has one that lives in the stand.
 
Aye, tis Thailand lad.
The mini Vesa jobs are worth investigating, didn't think of that, ta.
 
As a sideline to this I found an old HP Win10 PC lurking in a cupboard.
Powers up fine but of course requires an unknown password.
No probs thought I, just do a full factory reset and I'm in......wrong!

The damn thing is still asking for a specific username and password. ( yup, tried blank boxes )

How do I get past this? If possible then I'll just need some RAM and a SSD and it will be quite sufficient for the task.
 
What do you mean factory reset?

Find a USB stick of 8 gigs or more then download windows 10 from microsoft which will offer to create the bootable drive with the USB. Stick this into HP and work out what the boot option button is on start up, possible F8, tap that constantly whilst starting up and choose the USB then wipe windows 10 with a fresh install.

If you cannot get to bios without a password, well thats a different issue.
 
Was thinking of that but wouldn't I need a fresh COA for Win 10?

Factory reset was wipe everthing using Wins own reset feature.(shift power/restart .... yadda yadda)
 
If the HP model in question was originally supplied with Windows 10 installed then it should have a Windows sticker on with license code.

If so, then this should work with "Windows 10 (multi-edition ISO)", available from Microsoft here...


The installer gives the option of an upgrade vs. a full erase/install. Regardless, the only way to get rid of the existing user account/password (assuming this is at Windows level and not BIOS via SMC) is to do the full 'flush and fill'.

P.S. Some mainstream brand PCs that were originally supplied with Windows 7 may also be eligible for a Windows 10 upgrade. My old work Dell laptop did and this thing is from circa 2011. I only installed 10 Pro recently (along with a ram upgrade from 4 to 8GB), as some clients were starting to get a bit testy about letting contractors access their networks via the previous OS.
 
Some great info there, thanks.

In the end a second reset worked a charm. No win sticker though, even though the HP site confirms it shipped with Win10 on board.
 


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