Can someone help me with the Spec of my new Dell PC? Please?

[SleighlyMadSanta]

My needs

MN (of course!!!)
Other internet use including basic games (online games, iSketch etc.) & some MSN which my current PC hates.
DP uses it for a bit of business (spreadsheets, letterheaders, business cards...)
I have 2 6yo girls who will expand there use of the PC over the coming years (MSN, homework, whatever else young girls get into)

It is not used for gaming or anything (we have PS2 etc. for that). It is not used as multimedia centre - we have a TV for that. As a result I am thinking I am looking for a basic "entry level" PC.

Initial questions

Firstly I assume Dell is OK to buy from?

Choice of processor:
Intel Celeron or Pentium or AMD athalon?
Single core or dual core?

I assume a 16x DVD +/- RW Drive is a writeble drive? Do I want a second for £10?

I am sure I will be back with more Qs by the end of the night...but I am going to cook tea for now.

bump?

Oh an there is the Viiv processor...

answers from my Dp(geek) {grin]

1 -dell are good pc's

2 -intel ,tho amd are just as good

3 -if just using it for basics single core will be ample..dual core is for gaming ,mediacentre's etc

4- if you do alot of copying from cd to cd(cdownloading music etc) a second rewriter would be quicker but if not then don't bother...

word of warning though you can often pick up up-grades (eg dvd ,memory ,hard drive sizes ) cheaper than dell sell them for.

.ebuyer.com are sellers for other makes eg hewlett packard ,might be worth seeing what deals are available with them,before buying.
for example hewlett packard laptops are cheaper with more memory than dells...

me again.. posting a link may be hlpful ,if poss

I am planning to post the spec tonight/tomorrow when I have ironed out the above Qs properly, cos not all options are available on all machines IYSWIM.

It will be an Insiron530 - I have to work out which package gives the best balance of what I weant v price.

it will probably be the first or second

ie. £299 or £329. But I am not sure about the athlon processor or Vista on the £329. I tend to think about it being in the Tesco cheap machines.

If I go for the £299 I will prob ditch the monitor (I currently have an 18" which is bigger than included) and would take £100 off price which I would spend on possibly upgrading to dual core and XP (not convinced by Vista at this stage).

I would probably add Wireless card (£18) for future use.

Will check other suppliers when I have worked out what I would want from Dell IYSWIM.

Geeky friend told me to go for AMD when I was speccing a Dell recently.

My Spec came to about £1000

If I have AMD I can't have XP...which still concerns me a bit, although I have to work out what software I want to put on it and see if there is a likely clash

dell is a reasonable make - I have one at home and have had no problems with it. And the university I work with now recommend them to staff and students unless they have very specific needs that would necessitate anything else.

Lots of people prefer xp to vista - but if you have no great preference it is probably worth getting used to vista since that is what is going to be around for the next few years mostly - so software will be for that as first choice.

There is no problem with the amd rather than intel - both are fine.

I would add the wireless - you are unlikely to add it for much less than that in the future.

If you have spare money to throw at it I would go for more memory rather than dual core - how much memory does it come with ? I would say anything up to 2Gb would be good (unless you are into gaming etc when more would be better).

Have you checked out their outlet site - changes all the time - but you may be able to pick up something more to your preference especially if you don't want the monitor.

why can't you have amd with xp ?

Unfortunately, I am not a Geek and have no idea. My friend wrote down what I needed and I bumbled through it. She seems to think Vista is fine but recommended I go for Home Premium (I think) rather than basic, although this then means you need a better processor or something.

[ignorant]

Throkenholt, it's probably simply because Dell don't offer that option. I couldn't have a 19 inch screen with my choice, I "had" to have a 22 inch one and I didn't want one that large.

it is a pain when they lock you into their set specs - just because that is what they want to shift at the moment !

That site I referenced is good because you get to pick the spec that suits of what is available - and then get whatever screen you like from wherever you like.

I agree with the not getting the basic operating system options - they are usually pretty basic (but I am lucky I can get the good versions of word processor etc from work).

Yes Dell seem to lock you to Vista if you have an AMD processor.

If I do decide I want XP I will have to have a Intel and I will have to pay £30 extra for the XP itself.

I will have a look at that site later. I need to watch casualty now which is my only TV vice these days

what are thoughts on this?

for the dell site - just select which base unit (eg inspiron, dimension etc) in the stockrooms bit, then click submit search - and you will see a list of what is available. You can specify vista etc under the os option - any any other options that you want it to filter on.

As far as the tesco on goes - looks fine for what you want - I think acer is an ok make. My only query is the office package is only 60 day trial - so you will have to buy it extra if you want it. You could use openoffice as a free alternative if you prefer.

TY.

I was planning to buy Office Home & studnt license anyway.

I am just looking at my current spec and as far as I can see all these meachines (apart from Tesco) are way below this spec...which surprises me as my current PC is 6yrs old (although had a new motherboard 3yrs ago).

My current spec seems to be
Intel Pentium 4 2.5Ghz
2.49 GHz with 512 of RAM
76Gb hard drive (only 25% used so I don't need a huge hard drive)
Radeon 7500 Graphics card

I have just mocked this up on Dell.

Comes to £470 with no monitor which is disappointing when I started looking at the £300 starting package and took off the monitor for a £100 bonus. Although Office 2007 adds £100

Components
Intel® Core? 2 Duo E4500 Processor (2.2GHz,800MHz,2MB cache)
Genuine Windows Vista® Home Basic - English
1 Year Base Warranty - Collect & Return
No 17" Monitor
2048MB 667MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM [2x1024]
250GB (7200rpm) Serial ATA Hard Drive with 8MB DataBurst? cache
Integrated Intel® Graphic Media Accelerator 3100
16x DVD +/- RW Drive
Dell? Entry Quietkey USB Keyboard - UK/Irish (QWERTY)
Dell 2 Button USB Scroll Optical Mouse - Black
Accessories
Integrated 7.1 Channel High Definition Audio
No Speakers
19-in-1 Media Card Reader
No Modem
Internal PCI 802.11b/g Wireless Network Card
Microsoft® Office 2007 Home and Student - English
Services & Software
No Accidental Damage Support
No Security/Anti-Virus Protection - English
Also Includes
Resource DVD - (Diagnostics & Drivers)
English Documentation with UK/Irish Power Cord
D015008
Inspiron Desktop Order Uk
1 Year Base Warranty - Collect & Return
Dell Internet Order.

I guess this is a second choice. I can't tell the processor speed though with the Athlon.

£520 with the monitor

Components
AMD® Athlon? 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4000+
Genuine Windows Vista® Home Basic - English
1 Year Base Warranty - Collect & Return
Dell? 19" Silver Wide Flat Panel (SE198WFP) - UK/Irish
2048MB 667MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM [2x1024]
160GB (7200rpm) Serial ATA Hard Drive with 8MB DataBurst? cache
Integrated nVidia® GeForce® 6150 SE graphics
16x DVD +/- RW Drive
Dell? Entry Quietkey USB Keyboard - UK/Irish (QWERTY)
Dell 2 Button USB Scroll Optical Mouse - Black
Accessories
Integrated 7.1 Channel High Definition Audio
No Speakers
19-in-1 Media Card Reader
No Modem
Internal PCI 802.11b/g Wireless Network Card
Microsoft® Office 2007 Home and Student - English
Services & Software
No Accidental Damage Support
No Security/Anti-Virus Protection - English
Also Includes
Resource DVD - (Diagnostics & Drivers)
English Documentation with UK/Irish Power Cord
D015106
Inspiron Desktop Order Uk
1 Year Base Warranty - Collect & Return
Dell Internet Order.
Free 17" Wide to 19" Wide Flat Panel MonitorCompatibility Alert
Recalculating Price

Great - I f I want (have) to upgrade to Vista I have to by a router to continue to use AOL [frustrated]

right - well the difference from your old machine is the processors have moved on a lot in 6 years (pentium 4 is old now !).

You also have only 0.5 Gb memory at the moment - so upping to 2Gb as most of those you have mentioned will make a big difference to the amount of stuff that can run at the same time without slowing down.

Both of those would happily do what you want and probably much more.

The AMD processor is here - it is a 64 bit chip as opposed to the more traditional 32 bit intel ones (not sure what advantage if any that gives you for home stuff - but for big number crunching that we do where I work 64 bit is definitely needed - maybe for games 64 bit would be useful - but not really for normal use I think). Actually looking at it the intel one is also 64 bit I think.

Another thing is you are going for dual core processors - effectively you have 2 in one box - so you get twice the processing power - but if all you are doing is surfing, email, wordprocessing etc I am not sure that it is much use.

It seems that they have reached the limit in speeding up processors for the moment, but what they can now do it squeeze more into the same space - hence dual core (for work we have just bought dual quad-core processors - 8 in 1 box where currently we have 2 !!).

Try putting some of those specs into the other site and see what other options come up - maybe something that suits you will be there. They are all new - but they are systems that for some reason have been returned - maybe misordered etc - they can be quite a bit cheaper.