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[Marks DTM Calib]

Mine is getting a bit long in the tooth.

Needs windows 7 and must be capable of running my TV card and a few games.

I have a 24 inch widescreen Samsung monitor so dont need another screen.

Thinking of the Dell Studio XPS8100 which, with discount codes, I can get for £674 (inlcuding the wireless keyboard and mouse plus delivery).

Any other good offers people have spotted?

[Shimmy]

Surprised you're not thinking of just upgrading the necessary components.  After all you're a fountain of wealth in helping out with how to diagnose and fix cars!

What's the spec of what you have now, and what is the most demanding task you need doing from your computer?

[Richgm]

Upgrade yours.
My computer was a 486 sx50 needless to say there isn't any of the original bits left now. But it's still the only desktop I've brought and it's going to get reincarnated again in the near future.

[Nickbat]

Upgrade yours.
My computer was a 486 sx50 needless to say there isn't any of the original bits left now. But it's still the only desktop I've brought and it's going to get reincarnated again in the near future.

Reminds me of Trigger's broom. 

Mine's pretty much the same one I had back in the 1990s. Yes, it's had a few new cases, mobos, processors, power supplies and so on, but at the end of the day, it's still the same old PC!  

[Plomien]

I would just upgrade the existing system or build a new one rather than get dell

[Jimbob]

whats the evalue code of the one your looking at?

one thing that crossed my mind...do you still need a real serial port, or will laptop / adaptors fit that requirement? 

[Kevin Wood]

Just built myself an I5-760 machine with 4GB ram, 1Tb HDD for £520 using bits from Novatech. No O/S in that though - it's running Ubuntu.

Do you really want/need 64 bit Windows? Not sure what windows 7 allows but switching on PAE on the 32 bit version might be enough. Might still be crippled to only support 4GB, so if you need more ram that might force the issue.

Kevin

[Kevin Wood]

Oh, and got a motherboard with plenty of legacy ports too. Serial (a must), Parallel (for my EPROM programmer ). Mixture of PCI and PCIE, SATA, IDE, floppy even (yes, I use them - preserving old software for a collection of vintage machines).

Kevin

[duggs]

Was told by a contact who works in PC World that they have some great offers coming up in November/December...0% interest over 12 months and all that.

I'm holding out for a i7 machine.

[cem_devecioglu]

before the pc hardware, even choosing the right version of win 7 is problem.

imo prof or ultimate editions are better
please check the table at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_7_editions

(I am usin fathers lappy in another city and having trouble with keyboard so reply cant be long :-/)

and some other points
- dont buy a mobo with on board graphics (for tv card not to have problems)
-some tv cards have additional ethernet so causes trouble
-most towers and desktops dont have sufficient cooling and power supply

you can use these for long years (buy one time)
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/category/category_slc.asp?CatId=1510&name=Full-Tower%20Cases

-dont buy over 4gb ram

-at least use an ssd disk for c and a secondary big one for data 

-forget wireless keyboards and mice for obvious reasons

so forget dell

[Kevin Wood]

imo prof or ultimate editions are better
please check the table at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_7_editions

Handy table. So, still limited to 4Gb with the 32 bit version.   

Will it at least use PAE to give to you the whole 4GB? Otherwise, with holes for the peripherals, it's not really worth having over 3GB physical RAM.

Not worth the overhead and potential hassles of running 64 bit unless 4GB is a real limitation, IMHO. If they hadn't crippled it that would be 4GB per process address space, of course.

Kevin

[Mr Skrunts]

Mark, you dont mention the Spec of the PC regards CPU Type/speed memory etc.

Allways worth comparing what is being sold on Ebay, as there are a lot of Dell resellers on there selling surplus equipment.  I bought my Dell 19" for £450 from a seller on Ebay, 1st class seller, saved me £150 on new at the time as the flat screens were just taking off.

This is just one of the PC's I found, dont know what the original price was or even if this is a bargain, but nice setup, Dell XPS kit has allways been a nice bit of kit.   

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/PC-Dell-Studio-XPS8100-Gaming-Computer-/190462255149?pt=UK_Computing_DesktopPCs&hash=item2c586f602d

http://shop.ebay.co.uk/i.html?_trkparms=65%253A1%257C66%253A2%257C39%253A1&_nkw=XPS8100&_dmpt=UK_Computing_DesktopPCs&_sop=2&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14

[Plomien]

My version of windows 7 came with a 64 and 32 bit system
64 bit is much faster and the 4Gb of memory on 32bit also includes any you have on your GFX card, so if you have a 512+ GFX card then you lose out on memory

[Mr Skrunts]

My version of windows 7 came with a 64 and 32 bit system
64 bit is much faster and the 4Gb of memory on 32bit also includes any you have on your GFX card, so if you have a 512+ GFX card then you lose out on memory

That's on board video though.

If both versions of windows are supplied then does the licence allow dual booting. (Both 32 and 64 bit versions installed?)

[Mr Skrunts]

What makes use of more than 3.25gb of ram on 64 bit windows.

I will soon be building a PC that will have to cope with a hell of a lot of printing and scanning and will have a sheet feed scanner added to it.  Would this benifit from 6gb or even 12gb of ram?