Buying a new computer.

[Dan208]

After all the problems that we've been having with our computer, my wife and I have decided to just go ahead and get a new one. I really don't know what I should be looking for when buying. Here is what it will mainly be used for: Internet (surfing and email), downloading music, pictures, school work (we are both going back to school this fall), and other things like taxes and such.

As far as pictures goes, we do have online storage on Kodak. My wife plans on going through the pictures every few months and sending the important ones (mainly our daughter's pics) to Kodak to get a CD of them so we have a hard copy, just in case they get wiped off Kodak's site for some reason. I also plan on keeping our current tower and playing around with it. I don't know if you can transfer stuff from a new tower to an old tower for storage, but if you can then there is that option for additional storage.

Last night we got to playing around on Dell's site and came up with a few options. The first one is around $1500 (don't want to spend much more than that). It has Vista and we splurged a little on a few things (wireless keyboard/mouse and dual DVD burners). The other one is around $1100 and it still has XP. There is only one DVD burner (no big deal) and we would probably still go with the wireless keyboard.

The main thing I'm wondering is would it be worth the extra few hundred dollars to get the one with Vista? We could go with a single DVD burner to bring the price down a little. We'd also like to upgrade it to have MS Word for school work. After doing some research, I think what we've selected for memory, hard drives, etc would work for us. The only thing I'm unsure of is going with XP or Vista. Any suggestions? Thanks a bunch.

Dan

[rynprov]

Hmmm..... Windows Vista or Windows XP.... It's a hard choice. Look up the reviews on Windows XP and Windows Vista and decide for yourself. Also check out the reviews on other operating systems, like Linux (eg: Ubuntu), and decide for yourself.

[Dan208]

Originally Posted by rynprov

Hmmm..... Windows Vista or Windows XP.... It's a hard choice. Look up the reviews on Windows XP and Windows Vista and decide for yourself.

I have. It seems like you have your die hard XP fans that trash Vista, and vice versa.

[zipulrich]

For what you want to do, stay with XP. You already know it, so there's no learning curve. Once you get your old PC working again, you can always install Ubuntu (or another flavor of Linux) on it to learn & play with.

You don't need 2 DVD burners. You'll only ever use 1, anyway. Instead, get a DVD burner and a CD-Rom drive (for making easy copies of DVD's/CD's). You should be able to pick up a nice, fast system for 1 Grand or under.

[rynprov]

...or have a DVD/CD combo drive.

[photolady]

A cd rom drive will not read dvds. And I have two DVDRW's in my computer because of that reason. I use both of them. DVDRW's will read, cd, dvd and burn both, that's why I have two dvdrws.

[Dan208]

Here is what we came up with last night:

PROCESSOR Intel Core 2 Quad Processor Q6600 (8MB L2 cache,2.4GHz,1066FSB)
OPERATING SYSTEM Genuine Windows® XP Home Edition - English
MONITOR 20 inch E207WFP Widescreen Digital Flat Panel
MEMORY 2GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz- 2DIMMs
HARD DRIVE 320GB Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200RPM) w/DataBurst Cache™
OPTICAL DRIVE 16x DVD+/-RW Drive
VIDEO CARD Integrated Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 3100
SOUND Integrated 7.1 Channel Audio
KEYBOARD & MOUSE Logitech Cordless Desktop S 510 Keyboard and Mouse - Arctic Silver (ships s
FLOPPY & MEDIA READER No Floppy Drive Included
MODEM & WIRELESS 56K PCI Data Fax Modem

SPEAKERS Dell A225 2.0 Speakers
ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE No Subscription (only 30-day protection)
OFFICE SOFTWARE Microsoft® Office Home and Student 2007
ENTERTAINMENT & EDITING SOFTWARE Yahoo! Music Jukebox - Music Player

WARRANTY AND SERVICE 2Yr In-Home Service, Parts + Labor, 24x7 Phone Support
DATASAFE ONLINE BACKUP Included 3 GB DataSafe Online Backup for 1Yr
DIAL-UP INTERNET ACCESS No ISP requested

Miscellaneous Award Winning Service and Support
Mouse Mouse included with Keyboard purchase
Adobe Software Adobe® Acrobat® Reader 8.1
Network Interface Integrated 10/100 Ethernet
Labels Windows XP™
PHOTO AND MUSIC SOFTWARE No Entertainment software pre-installed

We found it under the "Built for You" Inspiron 530 Home Workhorse. The total came to $1018. I don't know if we need the 19 in one multimedia card reader or not (that will add $20). Does this look like a decent system for what we would be using it for? Thanks for all the quick replies so far.

[zipulrich]

Sorry, my mistake - I meant to type 'DVD-Rom' instead of 'CD-Rom'.
I still see no need (or reason) for two burners.

Edit - yeah, that seems like what you need at a decent price. You'll be happy.

[DJoe]

Also get a Full Sized tower, not a smaller tower.

I made a huge mistake buying an HP and they usually come with smaller towers.

I would also stick to WindowsXP. Your other option is to dual or virtual boot WindowsXP+WindowsVista, Vista is still having hardware driver issues.

[chapper]

Just a thought. Open Office is excellent & it's free. Using that instead of Word would save you some bucks.
I use to use Word but now I've been using Open Office for quite some time on my new rigs & couldn't be happier.

[DJoe]

You can save the most if you build it yourself, well if you know how to. I find too much junk is put onto Windows when pre-installed.