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I am looking to buy a new pc for home - I have a very old slow machine used mainly for internet access and want something much quicker. I quite like the flat screen monitors, also need (want) colour printer, scanner and recordable cd. Likely to be used in conjuction with new digital camcorder I will be getting next month. I have been looking to find some information from computer mags, internet etc and there is a bewildering array. I need advice on what to get from an easy to understand magazine deigned more for a 'beginner' . I know mostly what I am doing but am not in IT and would appreciate any advice. Budget about 1k
Thanks
Thanks
Buy a PC mag with recommendations for such an ensemble - they are out there..
Generally, what they give awards to are the good ones - Mesh, Evesham, Systemax (Simply) all seem to do well for generic boxes.
Don't pay for a big software bundle though - all that can be had later, get the max hardware for the money.
At this pricepoint though, you might be sacrificing a lot of speed or capacity for that flat panel display. Or end up with a shit flat panel. Or both. There are specific caveats with LCD displays.
Generally, what they give awards to are the good ones - Mesh, Evesham, Systemax (Simply) all seem to do well for generic boxes.
Don't pay for a big software bundle though - all that can be had later, get the max hardware for the money.
At this pricepoint though, you might be sacrificing a lot of speed or capacity for that flat panel display. Or end up with a shit flat panel. Or both. There are specific caveats with LCD displays.
I put a very similar machine together for a friend recently with much the same useage, spec was:
Athlon XP 1900+
512mb DDR Memory
401240 CDRW
12x DVD Drive
80Gb 7200rpm HDD
128mb Geforce3 Ti 200 VGA Card
56K Modem
15" TFT Monitor
Wireless Keyboard and Mouse
More than adequate for all current games, DSL, all office applications. In fact, to date, nothing has stretched the little beast.
Price comes in at about £1000, but that was a while ago, so now it would be a quicker processor and a bigger disk for about the same money.
HTH
Matt.
Athlon XP 1900+
512mb DDR Memory
401240 CDRW
12x DVD Drive
80Gb 7200rpm HDD
128mb Geforce3 Ti 200 VGA Card
56K Modem
15" TFT Monitor
Wireless Keyboard and Mouse
More than adequate for all current games, DSL, all office applications. In fact, to date, nothing has stretched the little beast.
Price comes in at about £1000, but that was a while ago, so now it would be a quicker processor and a bigger disk for about the same money.
HTH
Matt.
Get the new iMac with the flatscreen – superb for dealing with your camcorder stuff cos it has iMovie on it – a doddle to use. You can get one with a built in CDRW too
Might not get all you want (ie the peripherlas) though for 1k.
Windoze PCs – urghhh!
>> Edited by MikeyT on Wednesday 28th August 15:20
Might not get all you want (ie the peripherlas) though for 1k.
Windoze PCs – urghhh!
>> Edited by MikeyT on Wednesday 28th August 15:20
damn macheads, when will apple give up.... 
Suggest (without bias as I don't work for them.... anymore) you check out the Dell homepage
www.euro.dell.com/countries/uk/enu/dfo/default.htm
This is the factory outlet where they sell the pcs that someone else has ordered and then cancelled. You save a fair whack. As employees we often used to buy these instead of using our staff sales package, as you generally get a better deal!
Should be able to get a fine PC for 1k on there. You should also get on site warranty etc etc so no worries for support etc. (plus their support site has to be one of the best going...)
Still the overall choice is bewildering, best to buy something vanilla and add clever stuff later when you work out what you need.
Suggest (without bias as I don't work for them.... anymore) you check out the Dell homepage
www.euro.dell.com/countries/uk/enu/dfo/default.htm
This is the factory outlet where they sell the pcs that someone else has ordered and then cancelled. You save a fair whack. As employees we often used to buy these instead of using our staff sales package, as you generally get a better deal!
Should be able to get a fine PC for 1k on there. You should also get on site warranty etc etc so no worries for support etc. (plus their support site has to be one of the best going...)
Still the overall choice is bewildering, best to buy something vanilla and add clever stuff later when you work out what you need.
You could try novatech as we have a couple of these pcs are work and seem to work ok. I have just had a look and you can get the sort of spec you are looking for under the 1k mark.
You are never going to get top spec (read branded) components for that money, but it should do what you want.
Lake
>> Edited by lake on Wednesday 28th August 15:33
You are never going to get top spec (read branded) components for that money, but it should do what you want.
Lake
>> Edited by lake on Wednesday 28th August 15:33
I disagree with Mr Tony,
Dell don't have the best motherboards (power supply PCI expandability etc) and everything is built to a profilt margin
If you're serious about using the PC for movie editing you may have to spend a bit more (waiting to be corrected) but I'd guess at least 1024meg RAM over 2ghz and an expensive video card (I don't know about video cards but I'm pretty clued up on sound) Also you'll need a very fast hard drive (no reccomendations as mine is 2 years old and still going strong)
Mac is a good choice if that's all you're going to do, (they're fantastic for music too) but bloody expensive, you'll get better value for money and more choice / expandability with a PC
Dell don't have the best motherboards (power supply PCI expandability etc) and everything is built to a profilt margin
If you're serious about using the PC for movie editing you may have to spend a bit more (waiting to be corrected) but I'd guess at least 1024meg RAM over 2ghz and an expensive video card (I don't know about video cards but I'm pretty clued up on sound) Also you'll need a very fast hard drive (no reccomendations as mine is 2 years old and still going strong)
Mac is a good choice if that's all you're going to do, (they're fantastic for music too) but bloody expensive, you'll get better value for money and more choice / expandability with a PC
quote:
You should also get on site warranty etc etc so no worries for support etc. (plus their support site has to be one of the best going...)
I can vouch for that. I bought a laptop from the factory shop last year. Earlier this year, the LCD layer in the screen cracked - no apparent damage to the chassis - and I called them up. A laptop packing case was couriered to me, I packed it up and gave it back to the courier, two weeks later it was returned with a new screen - no charge. All this on the standard warranty too.
I would without doubt recommend an iMAC for what you will use it for. In my last job I had both an iMAC and a PC, at home I use a PC. They do have advantages, admittedly, but none you will use. An iMAC will look better, sound better, perform better, be more stylish, more reliable. It may not be up there with PC's for faffing about with and some of the more techy stuff, but for movies, pictures, music and everyday use, it will be fantastic.
It will do everything you will use a PC for and better. You may miss some of the things that PC users get to do a little more often, but then I suppose it depends how much you like to use task manager and restart your computer, if you will miss that, stick with the PC
It will do everything you will use a PC for and better. You may miss some of the things that PC users get to do a little more often, but then I suppose it depends how much you like to use task manager and restart your computer, if you will miss that, stick with the PC
quote:
If you're serious about using the PC for movie editing you may have to spend a bit more (waiting to be corrected) but I'd guess at least 1024meg RAM over 2ghz and an expensive video card (I don't know about video cards but I'm pretty clued up on sound) Also you'll need a very fast hard drive (no reccomendations as mine is 2 years old and still going strong)
For video editing, ditch the GeForce4 type card and go for ATI Radeon 8500 a better all round card, with superior 2D capabilities. and get as much memory as you can - main and video memory.
quote:
I disagree with Mr Tony,
Dell don't have the best motherboards (power supply PCI expandability etc) and everything is built to a profilt margin
err thats why I suggested the dfo page, nothing is full price and there is 0 profit (more or less) on the machines - they just want rid of em... As for expandibility, well that depends what you get, sames goes for every other PC in the world...
Problem is you can always find a pc cheaper, as prices go down every day!
If you're not a serious techie, then either :
pay some extra to get something from a company thats still going to be around to honour the warranty in a years time.
or
pay as little as possible on the basis that when the hard drive dies, you just have to buy another one..
horses for courses...
Don't know much about PCs...
EBAY had Compaq Pressario 5000 PCs selling for 529 quid complete with 17 inch monitor.
My mate bought one last week from the EBAY auction, it has a very fast AMD processor DVD, CDRW etc. etc. Looks excellent value.
I understand that Compaq have been taken over by someone and so the PCs are being cheap!
Good Luck!
EBAY had Compaq Pressario 5000 PCs selling for 529 quid complete with 17 inch monitor.
My mate bought one last week from the EBAY auction, it has a very fast AMD processor DVD, CDRW etc. etc. Looks excellent value.
I understand that Compaq have been taken over by someone and so the PCs are being cheap!
Good Luck!
If you are planning to capture digital video, then beware - your new camcorder may not come with everything you need. We had to buy a £1000 digital capture card to be able to do anything other than capture stills. However, if the PC has Firewire ports, then you should be OK.
Our graphic designers (who do a fair bit of video, animation etc.) would go for a G4 Mac every time. If we let them...
Dell kit is excellent, but be careful about believing the prices you see on TV - once you add on some other bits like CD-RW etc. the price will go up a lot. But the build quality and reliability is excellent, as is the support.
Our graphic designers (who do a fair bit of video, animation etc.) would go for a G4 Mac every time. If we let them...
Dell kit is excellent, but be careful about believing the prices you see on TV - once you add on some other bits like CD-RW etc. the price will go up a lot. But the build quality and reliability is excellent, as is the support.
I'm doing some video capture and editing on my PC right now...! Been doing this for 10 years as a hobby-ish so know a little. My top tips... :
Fast processor is only good if you don't have much time or you want to realtime compress. I have a PentiumII 400MHz which is more than adequate if I don't want to real time WMV or MPEG2 compress.
Memory is a must, I'm talking system RAM here. I have 384MB which is adequate, ideally 512MB+. It's cheap these days so do it.
Video card, IMHO doesn't make naff-all difference because the chip on the video card doesn't do any work during capture and compression, only when you start to play back video. If you're wanting to produce MPEG2 stuff, then a good video card with MPEG2 hardware support would be good, but otherwise no big deal.
Hard disk I reckon is the most important bit. The bigger they are the faster they go. Without spending silly money get an Ultra ATA 7200rpm jobbie, 40GB minimum. You can have dual 2.8GHz processors, but they're crap-all use if your 20GB HDD can't shovel the data down fast enough.
I've got a Creative Labs Audigy sound card in my PC. As well as supposedly having >100bD s/n on the DAC's it's got a firewire port built on for transfer from my DV cam. £50 from mail order stores.
Just my 2p worth.
Roop (PentiumII-400, 384MB RAM, GeForce2 GTS, 45GB 7200 HDD, Creative Audigy)
>> Edited by roop on Wednesday 28th August 20:36
Fast processor is only good if you don't have much time or you want to realtime compress. I have a PentiumII 400MHz which is more than adequate if I don't want to real time WMV or MPEG2 compress.
Memory is a must, I'm talking system RAM here. I have 384MB which is adequate, ideally 512MB+. It's cheap these days so do it.
Video card, IMHO doesn't make naff-all difference because the chip on the video card doesn't do any work during capture and compression, only when you start to play back video. If you're wanting to produce MPEG2 stuff, then a good video card with MPEG2 hardware support would be good, but otherwise no big deal.
Hard disk I reckon is the most important bit. The bigger they are the faster they go. Without spending silly money get an Ultra ATA 7200rpm jobbie, 40GB minimum. You can have dual 2.8GHz processors, but they're crap-all use if your 20GB HDD can't shovel the data down fast enough.
I've got a Creative Labs Audigy sound card in my PC. As well as supposedly having >100bD s/n on the DAC's it's got a firewire port built on for transfer from my DV cam. £50 from mail order stores.
Just my 2p worth.
Roop (PentiumII-400, 384MB RAM, GeForce2 GTS, 45GB 7200 HDD, Creative Audigy)
>> Edited by roop on Wednesday 28th August 20:36
quote:
I would without doubt recommend an iMAC for what you will use it for. In my last job I had both an iMAC and a PC, at home I use a PC. They do have advantages, admittedly, but none you will use. An iMAC will look better, sound better, perform better, be more stylish, more reliable. It may not be up there with PC's for faffing about with and some of the more techy stuff, but for movies, pictures, music and everyday use, it will be fantastic.
It will do everything you will use a PC for and better. You may miss some of the things that PC users get to do a little more often, but then I suppose it depends how much you like to use task manager and restart your computer, if you will miss that, stick with the PC
Thanks for the back up moleamol!
If you just want it for buggering about with movie wise etc then the iMac comes with firewire ports and is real 'plug 'n' play stuff. Pi55 easy to use (as all Mac users know
) PCs? Wouldn't touch 'em I definitely go with the idea of getting a Mac rather than a PC. For movies and photos you can't beat the Mac (IMO - and I've also got a PC). iMovie, iPhoto - both free pre-installed applications are superb and dead easy to use.
There's a lot of people try to put you off a Mac but they are soooo easy to use - took less than 5 minutes, literally, to get my latest Mac hooked up to the internet and three minutes of that was squirrming round on the floor trying to get the plug in the phone socket. Get the Mac.
Paul
There's a lot of people try to put you off a Mac but they are soooo easy to use - took less than 5 minutes, literally, to get my latest Mac hooked up to the internet and three minutes of that was squirrming round on the floor trying to get the plug in the phone socket. Get the Mac.
Paul
Aagh. What's all this Mac support...? I've got one at work (G4) and all it's good for is Kidpix. Overpriced and underpowered. The video editing stuff on the Mac is the same as that shipped with Windows XP. What's with that daft one button mouse an' all. Have to hold the button to get to more menus, no wonder mac users never get anything done waiting for those...!
They're also shipped with PCI graphics cards that would be considered low-spec in a PC.
Many PC's now come shipped with firewire and USB 2 anyways, and additional peripherals are always more expensive for the Mac.
Anyways, I say PC. Fight Fight Fight...!
They're also shipped with PCI graphics cards that would be considered low-spec in a PC.
Many PC's now come shipped with firewire and USB 2 anyways, and additional peripherals are always more expensive for the Mac.
Anyways, I say PC. Fight Fight Fight...!
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