Re: new pc needed, advice required

"Beck" <beck@none> wrote in message
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"tireless orion" <tireless.orion@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1193687560.231483.280710@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Apologies for being off topic, but I know there's enough knowledge
here to get the answer I need...

My work PC is beginning to play up, and this time I intend to change
BEFORE it goes wrong, as it was very messy last time.

Picked up a PC magazine for the first time in ages and am absolutely
bewildered...oh, how times have changed!

I mainly use Adobe CS3 (dreamweaver, flash etc.), all of MS Office,
Photoshop and various other smaller applications- often have lots of
documents open and work between them all at the same time. I'm not
playing PC games at all anymore (bar a little MAME, Defcon and
civilization) so I don't need an all singing & dancing games machine,
but I'm not really sure what I need.....

At the moment my three and half year old Athlon 3200+ (2ghz), 1gb RAM,
Geforce FX5500 (256mb) is OK, but it's struggling when I have lots of
things open.

I'm sure I don't need a new Quad processor, but the huge range of Core
Duo 2 processors is, frankly, stupid; I'm genuinely not sure which I
need and which would be a sensible buy.

Will certainly buy a 22" monitor with the new machine as it's handy to
have documents side by side, but other than that am looking for
guidance on the spec......any takers?

Go for as much ram as your budget will allow and also the fastest hard
drive.
If you have to choose between faster hard drive and more ram, go for the
faster hard drive. Its easier to upgrade the ram later down the road.
Most retailers will only sell PCs with Vista now, so make sure your
company programs work with Vista. If you don't want Vista or cannot use
it for other reasons then there are still vendors doing XP. I think Dell
do an XP option still and some of the other places but I am sure no high
street retailers do XP still.

You may not think you need a quad processor now, and you probably don't,
but thinking a little to the future you may need it in time. Go for the
best your budget will allow. If quads are too expensive, go for duo/dual.

Alternatively, if you are happy with your machine apart from the slowness,
you could upgrade it. Buy some more ram, upgrade processor (+ motherboard
if required) and get a faster graphics card.

I got this Compaq Presario 1024MB RAM with the Athlon Turion 3500 processor
(2.2 GHZ) with 120 GB HDD and various new memory slots, no floppies anymore,
it has been 7 years and I think this PC is fast! Maybe the external 400GB
Hard drive helps so I dont fill up my C: drive with Junk files from programs
helps....with TFT 19" Flat Panel Hi Def Monitor with Xshield and I love it,
it will keep me going for 5-6 years before its too old for new technologies,
programs etc...apparently Vista is buggy as hell I got this with XP Media
Centre edition upgradeable to Vista (but I cant be bothered as this is fine
for what I do) and find this PC to be quiet and a dream to work on....

Have you thought of wiping your Hard Drive and reinstalling your
OS/Programs? It could be slow due to junk files left on C drive due to
gaming, programs etc etc

I think they making 3.5 GHZ processors now whether they are quads/dual/core
whatever....and have for some time, I havent seen anything faster yet?

Oh, it is personal choice really........

skidz

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