PC Buying advice?

[reardrive]

I need a new PC (base unit) but am a bit of a technophobe.
Will only use it for surfing, emailing & a little word proccessing. Not into games at all BUT I will be taking up digital photography and may want to download music occasionally.
My budget is around £500 and I am looking at Athlon 1800, 256mb ram & 40gb hard disk plus CDRW.
Will this be adequate? Any comments or advice would be appreciated.

I see I've now been posted in the correct place. Sorry.



>>> Edited by reardrive on Saturday 31st May 23:57

[pmanson]

You should be able to get a lot more for your money for that if you only want the base unit. If your doing dig photography aim for at least 512Mb and a large hard drive

[sybaseian]

I need a new PC (base unit) but am a bit of a technophobe.
Will only use it for surfing, emailing & a little word proccessing. Not into games at all BUT I will be taking up digital photography and may want to download music occasionally.
My budget is around £500 and I am looking at Athlon 1800, 256mb ram & 40gb hard disk plus CDRW.
Will this be adequate? Any comments or advice would be appreciated.

You have Mail........

[sybaseian]

You posted this on the wrong forum......

[kanes]

it depends what exactly you're after, for that price you can esily get a very nice base unit. I'm currently finding Shuttle's a great business on the side for people, basically all the relatives and friends that hassle you about why their computer doesn't work, the answer is simple, buy a shuttle.

These pc's are basically straight out the box, all you do is add cpu, ram, hdd and cd drive. Upgrades are possible and it has plenty of ports to keep them going (how many times has someone asked you to install their new usb printer on an old pre USB AT motherboard?)

The box comes with instructions that are very simple and step by step. Only tool you need is a philips screwdriver. That way you can pretty much spec the machine to what they need. I'm not too keen on their Nforce or other AMD offering and it seems pentium/celeron is a good alternative for not too much more (and you don't need to bother explaining the AMD naming!)

If you go over to www.overclockers.co.uk or dabs.com you can find all the bits.

I'd go with:

Shuttle SB51G £209.44 (AMD SN41 offering at £236.47)
Intel celeron P4 2.4Ghz £132.78 (AMD 1800 @ £69.33)
Crucial 256 DDR £29.08
80 Gig Seagate hard drive £66.98
Liteon CDRW/DVD combo drive £51.70

And there you have a respectable PC with all ports (including firewire if you do go to digital photography) and it comes to £489.98 for the intel or
£453.56 for the AMD. (all prices were inc VAT)

Above all, it's small, quiet and reliable and means you've got a working pc and learnt something new. I've got my mother to build one, a woman that has trouble with how to print!

[Bodo]

I need a new PC (base unit) but am a bit of a technophobe.
Will only use it for surfing, emailing & a little word proccessing. Not into games at all BUT I will be taking up digital photography and may want to download music occasionally.
My budget is around £500 and I am looking at Athlon 1800, 256mb ram & 40gb hard disk plus CDRW.
Will this be adequate? Any comments or advice would be appreciated.

Even today's cheapest Dell system will cope with your requirements.

Buy a built system, unless you want to fix all parts yourself (which isn't that complicated).

Athlons are best value per money, and few quids more will give you an 80GB hdd and 512MB RAM, which you don't really need for your requirements, but speed up things a little bit more.

[Kinky]

And a decent monitor too - esp. for digi photos.

[adam1330]

Kinky said: And a decent monitor too - esp. for digi photos.

Agreed, you need a CRT Monitor, not a TFT.

[reardrive]

Thanks everyone, all very helpful info.

[sagalout]

I am in exactly the same situation reardrive. This has helped but why should I not get a TFT monitor Adam1330. They seem to be much smaller and easier to put on the desk etc. Also a flat picture.

[adam1330]

sagalout said: I am in exactly the same situation reardrive. This has helped but why should I not get a TFT monitor Adam1330. They seem to be much smaller and easier to put on the desk etc. Also a flat picture.

Depends what you are going to be using it for. TFT's are fine for general stuff, but if you want to do image manipluation you really need a CRT as they have a much better tonal range. I think they may have improved a bit now, but they also weren't meant to be very good for fast moving games, as they tended to have slower response times, so you got a sort of trail effect. TFT's are meant to be better for word processing etc though, as they can be easier on the eye.

[gopher]

Have to agree with the shuttle option for a number of reasons

1. Everything on board, and most accessible from the front

2. V Quiet

3. My 1.7 Celeron is my SQL server, IIS Server, Internet Gateway, Firewall and file and print server - yet to crash or put a foot wrong.

4. Cheap - because of all the in-built stuff you can concentrate on what you want - ok only 1 PCI and 1 AGP slot but keep these for the most important cards and you're ok.

5 V small - thinking of buying another putting a 3ghz p4 and a 120gb HD and a high end (digital) TV card and using one as an in house entertainment system.

I kept the onboard graphics because it was only a server - 30gb hard drive, 1.7 Celeron and 512 2600 DDR - is loverly - 2k sever installed without issue and has yet to crash.

Cheers

Paul

[sagalout]

There you all go again with terms and letters a'divent understand.
whats a Shuttle, I'm intending to do DigiPhoto but not games (except C.Mc Rally poss), is a TFT ok for that cos its a flat screen. A CRT screen is a lot cheaper (i think) so it would save me dosh.
Sorr for being illiterate, i've driven the bloody things for 13 years but if someone talks about the stuff inside I look all blank.
Now show me a V8 block and I get all gooey eyed...
i know I'm a luddite...

[annodomini2]

Shuttles aren't that cheap, works out about £100 more than seperate components (thats trade) from my supplier. You'll be better off buying a pre built machine. Dell are good, and reasonably priced for the kit. you can do it cheaper if you build it yourself, but then if anything goes wrong, you have to fix it yourself!

TFT's are ok for general stuff, but if you want one for photos you'll have to pay through the nose for the dogs danglies to match the clarity of a CRT.

[reardrive]

Thanks again.

I'm like 'sagalout' and really don't trust myself to get involved in a self-build project.
I've been leaning towards 'Dell' recently - some friends and PH'ers have recommended them.
But I think I've also seen some negative stuff about them on here in the past?

Guess it's like cars - whatever you choose there'll always be someone who'll say "Ooh no, wouldn't buy one of them".

[rlk500]

If you want to buy and forget get a Dell. We buy Compaqs at work but I would buy Dell's if I had my way. There are few machines that are as compatible, everyone's add on's seem to work fine, they don't have bespoke parts like Compaqs and are good value for money. Unless you run number crunching apps. then memory is more important than processor speed. If you are going to be gaming, then processor, Ram and a funky video card will be needed. Personally, I can't be arsed to game on a PC (downloading patches all night just to stop your machine crashing....no thanks I would rather use a PS2). As someone else said, large hard drive and lots of memory are best for Image manipulation (if you are thinking of DV for the future you will need shed loads of disk space). CRT's are better for picture manipulation but it really depends how serious you get, the problem I find on my laptop is that you often get the picture looking fantastic on screen, but when you print it it is too dark. This probably wouldn't happen on a CRT, but as I say it depends how serious you are.

[reardrive]

Many thanks rlk500, just the sort of advice I was looking for.