New PC tower recommendations?

[BlackMetal]

My PC pretty much bit the dust over the last week or so. It's been 3 or 4 years now so rather than deal with the headache of beating this thing back into working order, I'm ready to buy.

Any suggestions? I'm out of the loop. Back in the day I would have been up for building my own system but I really don't have the time for that sort of thing these days.

Main uses will be web browsing, PhotoShop, some video editing, but nothing that will really need a mountain of processing power. Current rig was running 2.4ghz so I wouldn't mind moving up a little higher than that, but not spending a ton either.

I've been using Sony VAIO stuff for a long time. Good/bad?

I'll be doing some researching of my own but I figure someone here will have some input too.

Is VISTA really enough of a disaster that I should look for something still running XP?

 

[BandAid]

watching for some good info...:smile:

 

[klrv6]

I'll be doing some researching of my own but I figure someone here will have some input too.

Is VISTA really enough of a disaster that I should look for something still running XP?

I would rather run XP than Vista right now...

What kind of money are you able to spend on this?

 

[BandAid]

Yes Xp for me and under $500 with a 22lcd..

 

[turbo2nr]

I love running dual monitors and recently have added a third. Think about an extra graphics card. You'll never go back!

I bought an Alienware computer. Comes very very clean! No introductory offers, or 30 day trials. I bought a very powerful quad processor with liquid cooling to run many programs at once for a scan/CNC station at work.

It's really a gaming computer, but that's what drives the market for faster and faster speeds. Shopping in that zone will get you best bang for buck.

Their intro model (Alienware) is a very nice system. Go ahead and get a Blu-Ray player with it and make it the center piece of your entertainment system for house.

 

[85HOT-T]

Their intro model (Alienware) is a very nice system.

I just checked out their stuff. Looks like some real nice products. Seems like they care about the consumer too.

 

[turbo2nr]

I have three computers with Vista and love it. I don't see what everybody is yelling about? No crashes here.

My new Alien I DID order with XP Pro, because someone told me too, but I now regret it.


So, I say Vista is not only good, but better!

Remember that 3.0Ghz on an old processor will get whooped by any new processor running at the same speed.

Ever been to www.tomshardware.com ?

I recently learned more than I wanted to know about computers.

Look at the list of times recorded for processing stuff, a "shoot-Out" on speed. They run benchmarks to see who is slow and who is go.

 

[BlackMetal]

Yeah I'm familiar with Alienware back when I was interested in gaming. I think they may be out my price range but I'll go take a look. My PC is back in "working" order but it just slowing down, I got lazy with keeping the garbage off of it.

The reason I said "tower" is because I already have a nice mouse/monitor/keyboard with this current system and I don't really have a use for more.

How about all this "dual core" stuff, I know what it is but haven't read if it's good/bad, is running two processors that add up to a certain speed worse than having one powerful processor?

 

[BlackMetal]

Just looked at the Alienware site. Not all that bad. The low end one is $1g and that's not too bad to start with a fresh slate and a new machine. Maybe I can find a deal somewhere.

 

[85HOT-T]

Just looked at the Alienware site. Not all that bad. The low end one is $1g and that's not too bad to start with a fresh slate and a new machine. Maybe I can find a deal somewhere.

I thought the low end one was 5 hundered and some change.

 

[klrv6]

If you want to keep your current hardware...

Download and boot this OS. Take it out for a test drive. It will not be anywhere near the speed of the system once you get it installed but, it will give you an idea of the interface and how the system behaves. You could always reinstall Windows if you wanted too.

Ubuntu Desktop Edition | Ubuntu

I've posted about this many times before. You don't need super fast hardware to run it, I have it running on a P4 single core with 1 gig of ram. It's a rather nice OS that has plenty of support and is FREE!!!!!! A few other notable freebies are....
PC-BSD - Home < Love it

and PCLinuxOS

 

[Dwayne]

Gaming computers, custom gaming computers, gaming pc, custom gaming pc

 

[TurboTnZ06]

I bought the wifey a 20 inch iMac refurb from apple store. Had to buy $99 iWork suite too. The finder(search) and other features once you figure them out are very easy to use to switch between applications. BTW, I'm a Windows software developer who builds his own PC's at home and for the office. Tigerdirect.com has some decent builds too. Your only giving up about $100 on tiger direct to build it yourself, so in parts its pretty good to buy it already built with XP installed, although Vista isn't bad once you disable the annoying "security" messages.

And I'm running intel quad core 2.4's overclocked and 10k rpm sata drive, I've yet to get all four cpu's to max out at the same time...