Pc Advice

[thurso angler]

Ok folks you lot seem a lot more clued up on computers than i do! so i after a bit of advice, me and the girlfreind are buying each other a computer for xmas and i am wondering if anyone can point me in the right direction as what spec and machine to buy our budget is £600 max.

 

thanks.

[SandTiger]

£600 each or between you both, mate?

 

Will you also be requiring technical support in that package or do you feel competent to deal with any potential issues w/out the need of tech support?

 

Edit...

 

Scrap the first question as I've just reread your post again - Also will you be requiring basic software costed into the £600 or can you use your existing s/ware

Edited November 21, 2005 by SandTiger

[thurso angler]

Hi sandtiger, £600 in total, need software unless we can use the stuff from work pc?

[Steve Burke]

One of the most important questions to ask is what are you going to use the computer for? Working back from that will give you the minimum spec. For instance if you don't play games you don't need an expensive graphics card.

[thurso angler]

It will mainly be used for internet, and doing some work from home and storing photos.?

[SandTiger]

Will you be uprading your monitor also?

[Sportsman]

What colour do you want?

[thurso angler]

we need a complete system, the pc i always use is at my work we havent one at home

[Steve Burke]

We had a similar requirement to you, and 11 months ago we bought a Dell Dimension 3000 on special offer that included 512Mb of memory instead of the nomal 256 Mb and a £40 discount. The standard package included, amongst other things, a DVD/CDRW combo drive and Microsoft Works. We paid £315 including VAT and delivery for it plus opted for XP Pro on Newt's advice which took the cost up to £374. We've been very pleased with the performance for word processing, surfing and photos.

 

However in the last few days we've had problems with lines across the monitor (a 17" CRT), and this also occured when we used the monitor on Peggy's computer.

 

I've just come off the phone to Dell and the monitor is being replaced FOC under warranty. It'll be arriving tomorrow!

 

Dell have just won Computer Active's best after sales customer service award. I can see why!

[nick]

Do you have to buy it before Christmas? There are usually some very good deals around after Christmas (well mid january time onwards).

 

Software - you should of course buy it, however there are other options. There is a totally free Office package which is compatible with MS Office. There are of course also free operating systems.

 

I wasn't totally clear whether you were looking at buying 1 or 2 systems. If just one then there are some good laptops available in your budget.

 

If 2 then you may well have to buy CRT rather than LCD monitors, but that's not really a problem.