What Pc?

[Kazi]

Just a quickie, im looking around various sites and suppliers as im after a new home pc to compliment my 2 other existing PCs and 1 apple Mac.

So far, Dell seem to be the favourite with a competative quote and excellent track record. What specs do you guys run on?

Ram? Proccessor? etc.....

Any advice would be great. Im only after a mid range PC with just the basic operations in mind. Internet, DVD burning etc.

Kaz.

[Brettster]

get a mini mac :)

[MrADeveci]

dell.co.uk

would advice them to anyone - they build great pc's and good prices ........ try and get your self a deal too ... sometimes they double ram / hdd .... or even give you a 19" ttft ... instead of a 17"

:P

[Monster-Mat]

Fujitsu Siemens, :)

PC ....... Fujitsu-Siemens

MD Athalon 3200+ L2/1MB

VIA K8T800 Mother board

2x DDR 256 mb pc400

nVIDIA GFX5200 Ultra Gamer 256MB ViVo

Card reader USB 2.0

DVD+RW+R 16X10X40X12X4X2,4

DVD CD48X DVD16X IDE

160GB IDE 7200 U/min

19" philips LCD monitor....

Laptop.......Fujitsu-siemens

AMILIO A1630 3200+

15.4" WXGA TFT

AMD Athalon 64 3200+ GHz

512 MB DDR

80 GB HD

dvd Burner

ATI Radeon 9700 Graphic card with 128MB

10/100 MBit LAN

Wireless LAN

Fire Wire

56k Modem

USB 2.0

Windows XP Home, Works 8.0

[dhs]

Get the best you can afford. Simple and common advice but always true. We use Novatech.co.uk for all our company PC's. We also stick to Pentium chips as they are the best by far.

Basic spec:-

3.0 chip (or better)

512 ram (min)

20gig HD

good sound card

best graphics card available

DVD writer

17 inch flat screen

Firewire and USB ports at front of box

Then if you want to be really :mat:

Extra cooling fans with LED lighting

Neon strips in the box

LCD panel showing temp and power curves

Chrome finishes

Bloody great chain holding the thing down to stop thieving scum from transfering ownership to some guy down the pub!! :D

[Mark D]

I always build my own PC, for a couple of reasons:

It's cheaper and the PC can be customised to my exact requirements.

One thing I hate about PCs is the noise - so I put effort in to making them whisper quiet - that's not an option people like Dell tend to offer.

Also with Dell, the basic somputers are cheap, but upgrading them costs alot.

The cost to upgrade from an 80Gb HDD to a 160G is more than it costs to buy a complete 160G HDD. The same nearly applies to memory - upgrading from 512Mb to 1024Mb is £94 - I paid less than £100 for 2x 512Mb PC3200

A floppy drive costs £23.50 from Dell - or £5 from my local computer shop.

[Kazi]

Macs are great, just not so widely used. As for processors, other computer users have advised Athlons but Dell only use Pentium.

I have thought of building my own PC but, I sacrifice on after sales.

The idea I have so far is the follows,

8O Gig H drive

512mb Ram

Pentium 4 3.0ghz

17"/19" TFT flat pannel screen

DVD+Rw Drive

What would you expect to pay for this?

Dell maybe expensive to upgrade, but when the time comes, i'll just buy another.

Thanks for the advice so far.

Supercharged sounds like a plan....

[peter026]

I got mine from Tiny, very happy with it,and you can choose your own spec

[Kazi]

I got mine from Tiny, very happy with it,and you can choose your own spec

←

Tiny are now part of Time, and they get laods of really bad reviews and I remember watching them on watchdog. Have you ever had any probs?

[NickF]

I'd recommend Dell too. We have been buying them at work for the last year and they are reliable and nicer to look at than the IBMs we used to buy.

I'm not a big fan of Dell laptops though. My new D600 isn't a patch on the IBM Thinkpads I've had before, so I probably wouldn't buy one with my own money.

[peter026]

I got mine from Tiny, very happy with it,and you can choose your own spec

←

Tiny are now part of Time, and they get laods of really bad reviews and I remember watching them on watchdog. Have you ever had any probs?

←

No probs at all, they even rang me to ask if everything was O.K. a few weeks later

came all set up with Supanet dial up, but just use them as an extra Email addy,as Im broadband with a local server, which I get for free

[Kazi]

Not sure wether im any more in te know than when I posted this topic :P

Got some ideas, but just expected everyone to say apple Mac, as I know on paper they are superior in build quality and on reliability to. Just not so compatible.

You guys keep posting, Next question is..........Athlon or P4? or even a G4/G5 Mac?

[NickF]

You guys keep posting, Next question is..........Athlon or P4? or even a G4/G5 Mac?

←

Personally I'd say Intel processors every time, but thats just my opinion. I'm sure others will disagree...

[Bobski]

I would have said dell, as i have had 2.

But they are restrictive for any future upgrades, for anything to do with the case/Mobos.

But i have got a far better price and spec from MESH (meshcomputers.co.uk)

I cant buy the parts myself for the price they are doing it for me!

Intel dont hold the crown anymore...AMD64 FX or the new 3800/4000+ CPU's.

[legendswraith]

to be honest you pay over the odds for a branded machine but if you want tne ultimate go for an alienware pc they aren't cheap but the specs are fantastic.

Not very long ago a friend of mine purchased a xp3200 amd system with a 17"tft off eBay and when we researched the parts for it we couldn't build it ourselves any cheaper. My advice is to go on eBay and have a good look at the specs 64 bit chips are going to be the future but there is nothing written for them yet and unless you need the speed for gaming you will never need the processor power or a high end graphics card.

The only thing i would look for in the pc is how easy it will be to upgrade if you are on a budget go for a low end 64bit amd chip with a half descent graphics card and dvd rewriter and make sure it has a pci express slot on it for the new generation of graphics cards then in the future if you need more power you can put a new processor in or graphics card

Good luck with the search

Leg

[flotsam]

Wouldn't touch Dell with a barge pole.

I ordered one for my sister and they had all sors of probs. When I had a look at the thing, there was no reset button no software discs for drivers etc. and the internal hardware didn't fit the interface sockets properly. When she called the support the crooks tried to sell her additional hard disks to "speed up" the machine.

For myself, I build my own PC so I get to choose hard disk size, memeory size, processor, motherboard and video card. Dabs do kits and are usually far better priced than Dell. MicroDirect I've had no poblems with over the years and sometimes some very low prices.

[Anees]

I'd say QubX Computers (my cousins company). Supplied lots of schools and businesses where they get HAMMERED and so far only had two faults!

Your abit far to get the same level of support offered to local customers so if you insist on a PC from the big boys then, I've found Dell, Acer, Fujistui-Siemens, Mesh, Evesham to be ok. Most the time I just get a custom PC Built from QubX.

Regarding AMD/Intel they both good CPU's - it is more to do with the overall packages offered then buying a PC specifically because it has an Intel or AMD chip.

I am personally an AMD fan, but I do think from a system builders point of view Intel chips are easier to build with.

Good luck,

If you are interested in a price from QubX let me know (PM) and I'll try and sort something out for you. ;)

[Kremmen]

I would also look at Novatech as I know a few who have purchased from them in the past and had no problems.

The one thing to watch out for is the recent lack of a pucker M$ XP OEM CD. They all seem to come with those horrible restore CD's or even worse a restore partition which means if you format that, all routes to reinstall are lost.

This means that upgrading hardware and subsequently trying to use this restore route is difficult if not impossible.

In my opinion there is no better start than installing XP from scratch starting with a format from a proper XP CD.

Novatech, as far as I can tell, will supply a system with all the driver discs and you can select not to have it pre-loaded with an OS, and select an XP CD.

The drawback - Novatech used to allow configuring on the website but now appear only to supply stock units. Evesham however, have a website configurer where you can add or remove various components.

Decisions, desicions.

[stevenage_saint]

I always say go with the best you can afford. Have a look at aria as they will build to your own spec and have a good reputation. I have recently been put off by Dell the fact that at work we have had motherboards, processor and power supply replaced on 5 PC's in the last 6 weeks.

I personally built my own PC so I can have what I want on the inside. I chose AMD Athlon 64 over Pentium, for a start they are cheaper, just as reliable and in benchtests out perform Pentium 4. You get some people who are Intel fans others are AMD fans. If you want to save on cost then go AMD as there equivelent chips are around 7% - 15% cheaper than Intel. AMD are often the gamers choice now but it all depends what you will be using the pc for.