New Home PC advice

[Alastair]

Hi,

We need a PC for the house, have been using my work laptop but now we've signed up for BB and Melissa is going to be a part time student, part time work from homer we need a proper machine at home.

Really don't need anything too fancy as it'll mainly be used for surfing, spreadsheets, office type stuff etc but will be used a lot for Photoshop as we're both very into digital photography therefore the screen needs to be TOP NOTCH. Doubt I'll play many games on it but would love to get something like GTR running as I'm a bit car mad.

Budget, well I'm not too sure what to expect, would love to be able to go for about ?500 but would stretch to ?600 or just over it it means getting an ace screen.

A little bit future-proof would be helpful too, don't want to fall into the obsolete trap within a year and a half.

This looks like a good deal from dell for a WS monitor but I think I'd really be pushing the budget getting something like that.

Final slightly different question is; the phone line is nowhere near where the PC will be, will a wireless router and a USB wireless dongle be all I need to attach the desktop PC to the broadband?

Cheers all.

PS - changed my user name from Agent L if you're wondering who I am

[oblivion_6]

Dell are probably your best bet, their entry level pcs and laptops are good for non gaming machines, their widescreen monitors are also very clear and responsive

I would go for one of them.

In terms of the BB yeah a wireless router and dongle are all you need, I use a Belkin router and dongle and it was really really easy to set up just set up the router with your broadband acct info and then install the software and follow the steps and thats it

[sj33]

While a Dell machine would be no good for gaming really (low-end GPU's), they'll be perfectly fine for anything else.

It must be said, for all the critisism Dell get, they really make the best PC widescreen monitors on the market right now.

[Lebowski]

If your useing photoshop your gonna need a decent graphics card and a fair bit of ram, i have Photoshop cs2 and my machine runs it ok, (not great with big files but not bad) My machine is over a year and half old now it's got a gt6800 graphics card a 2.4GHz processor and a gig of ram so look for something around or higher than them sort of specs if you want to run photoshop properley, you could proably set yourself up a decent base unit for a sub ?500 price point.

or idealy look at a new imac as I've always found photoshop to run better on my mac at work despite the fact that its a G5 and suposedley dosent match my pc spec wise, boot camp will see you right for windows based apps or you can just go fully mac as office is available for the mac now for all your word and excel type needs.

[Alastair]

Dell do look tempting, just having a browse round their site now. Might have to stretch the budget a bit to get that monitor and a decent spec though.

This is a real dumb question but does:
16x max. DVD+/-RW Drive - mean it'll play and burn DVD's? What about playing and burning CD's? Surely that one drive does both right?

System I'm looking at is:
2.80GHz, 800MHz, 2x1MB cache
1024MB Dual Channel DDR2 533MHz [2x512]
250GB (7200rpm) Serial ATA Hard Drive with 8MB DataBurst? cache
?549 all in. Sound OK? That's with a Value flat panel monitor. Think I'd be willing to pay the extra ?200 for that nifty WS 20" monitor though!!

Worth spending money on their support packages? They want ?141 for 3 years and that seems an easy way to cut the cost when I've got you lot to ask questions of

[Alastair]

Found the answer to the DVD drive question now so ignore that!

Any opinions before I impulse buy it

[sj33]

Any idea what graphics card it has, if any?

[Alastair]

A copy and paste:

128MB ATI Radeon? X300 SE HyperMemory graphics card

[Ajay1986]

Mate i use PS alot as well id say that set up is more then enough to do what you need, Its a good setup for the money

[sj33]

A copy and paste:

128MB ATI Radeon? X300 SE HyperMemory graphics card

Don't expect to game on it tbh.

Other than that, will do you fine.

[Alastair]

Could always upgrade the Vid card at a later date easily enough couldn't I if I ever decide to have a go at PC gaming.

Think I may well go for it as that screen is turning me on!!

[bingowings]

or idealy look at a new imac as I've always found photoshop to run better on my mac at work despite the fact that its a G5 and suposedley dosent match my pc spec wise, boot camp will see you right for windows based apps or you can just go fully mac as office is available for the mac now for all your word and excel type needs.

Photoshop runs like crap on the new Intel Macs - everyone is waiting for CS3 to include Intel support. on older Macs it runs fine, even on my undeniably gorgeous G4. so unfortunately Windows is the preferred option for Photoshop at the moment

but Dell are fine, all-round machines - i use one at work. brand spanking new 3GHz, 1GB ram, FX 540 graphics card and as i have said CS2 runs rather speedily, even clunkers like Illustrator.

[djjimbob]

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Nice wee box that

Thanks clever-forum-deleting-blank-space-thing.

[Alastair]

Have ordered it by abusing the credit card

You guys are in trouble if it's crap by the way

[Alastair]

It arrived today

Report to follow next week after I've put a plug socket in for it and bought a surge protector.

Screen is lovely, much more compact than I was expecting which is good.

Very impressed with their delivery, ordered Tues at 5pm, delivered Friday midday, speedy!