My 5-year old Dell doesn't cut it anymore!

Originally Posted by Winter Storm

1. Get the fuck away from Dell and never go back.
2. Aim for RAM above 1,000.
3. 8000 series GeForce card, or one of those top notch AGP cards.
4. Core 2 Duo or better(AMD wise)
5. See 1.
6. Yes get a DVD-RW, better yet, if you find one get the one that can burn/write all CD/DVD formats.

Dells are built with too many limitations, even thier so called "better" models and are hard to upgrade.

Look around here for a good PC: http://www.newegg.com/index.asp?CMP=...3&ATT=Branding

I stress 1. again. I own 2 worthless Dell PC's and both are pieces of junk.

1. It's true, Dell will hunt you down, and drink all the milk in your fridge without using a cup, and put it back in with barely any left.

2. Aim for at least 2048mb of Ram, 2 gig is becoming the standard, but if you want it to last longer i'd honestly aim for 3-4gig (And ram is dirt cheap right now, won't hurt the pocket much)

3. Video card REALLY depends on what you want to do. The 8800 series are pretty solid, but I'm rather disgusted with Nvidia's drivers for Vista. ATI this round doesn't have too much that is interesting. Once again, Nvivdia should be coming around with a new Graphics Series in Novemeber. I know that you could always be waiting for next generation with computer stuff, but the 9000 series should have much better Dx10 support, and hopefully better Vista drivers. You could always get something really cheap until after xmas. But once again, all depends if you game or want video acceleration etc..
AGP isn't even a consideration, current gen chipsets won't support them.

4. CPU really depends on your needs, but as Winterstorm stated, Get a dual core Core2Duo or AMD X2. Intel is releasing their Penryn (new Core2Duo), and Amd is coming out with their Barcelona, so you may want to wait a month to grab either or. If money is an Issue, go with a Dual Core, If you can throw in a extra hundred or so, get a Quad, It will last longer, and the Q6600 dropped in price recently to a reasonable amount.

Motherboard wise, go with one of the new chipsets like the P35/X38 *for intel*, for the PCI-E 2.0 spec etc..., for future GPU upgrade possibilities.

5. Your dell windows XP cd will not work on a different computer. Vista shouldn't have too much of an issue with those printers, but some playing around might be required if they are very old *Too lazy to look those model numbers up*

6. HDD wise, don't know what you are looking at , but a 500GB hdd can be had for about $120cdn, so i'd imagine it's cheaper usd. That should tide you over for awhile. If that is too big, 320's go for about $75 these days. Just go SATA and be done with it. Many new mobo's only have 1 IEDE connections anywaysv (Usually used up by DVD/CD drives), so i wouldn't bother with your old 40gb hdd. Mabye throw it into an external hdd case and use it as a small backup device.

7. Your monitor will work with the computer *with a digital to analogue converter...* , but that's like buying a Porsche to drive around town at 25mph and never faster. 22' LCD's are cheap.

That's about it for now, as Omni stated, try to give us a $ figure and a Idea what you want to DO with it.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by russ

These guys are giving fairly sound advice, but I would add that you might want to get a smaller {like 80 gig} hard drive that sports 10,000 RPM to be your OS drive and drop a 320 or 500 gig 7,200 RPM drive in as a secondary for file storage.

Not a bad idea, but the WD 7200.10's offer pretty much the same performance as the Raptors *10kRPM*, at a far lower cost per GB. Still not a bad idea though, I got 2 OS's running off my 75GB Raptor *Vista x64 and OpenSuse*

I'm also very curious why everyone is telling him to avoid Vista like the plague, wondering if anyone has some sound objections *I use Linux,Vista and XP, but if I had to live with only one i'd probably go with Vista*

There's nowhere I can't reach.

I will not deny that Vista often has issues and even will outright not work with older hardware (especially scanners for some reason..), but that is partially fault of the company and their laziness with drivers *when was the last time a new driver came out for that scanner?* It is also the nature of the IT field.

As for buying the stuff in Canada, try to get some of the part in the U.S if possible. A $1000 system should be doable, but it will be easier from within the U.S. Despite the fact that the Canadian dollar is in the 93+cent range, some of our computer parts and other consumer goods do not reflect the stronger dollar. Most canadians would love for Newegg to come here, which they have been promising for years now..

Alai came up with a good system, although I would probably hold off on the video card until November/December, get a better PSU *only like $40 more*, and the 22' LCD screen, and you should be good to go, all for under $800usd, $600 without the LCD.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.