Dell Inspiration 531?

[akasixcon]

I heard dell was doing their propriety parts thing. Any disadvantages on buying this? Anyone have experiences with dell or this inspiron 531?

Anyway here is the tech specs for this computer:

Dell Inspiron Desktop Details

or Click here

 

[PRVRT]

I do not know what you want to do with this system, so a little more info would help. If you plan to OC it, give it up. If you want to use it for a family home system everyone uses, it will be fine and I have had good luck with the 3 Dells I have. Dell is pretty much a buy it and use it PC, not real good to upgrade, and definately not good to mod. They lock you out of most BIOS settings, Dell parts are Dell parts, not off the shelf, and some things like video cards are not exactly what they say they are. My 2 cents.

 

[akasixcon]

I'm mainly going to use it for heavy video editing. Look at my signature for the current system I use to video edit. I need a faster processor for faster rendering.

The video card and ram I'm planning to upgrade later. And if possible, the processor and power supply unit years down the road.

My pentium 4 right now from 2002 is still performing really well. I'm limited with my CPU because of my motherboard and my power supply because of sony's propriety.

 

[PRVRT]

I'm mainly going to use it for heavy video editing. Look at my signature for the current system I use to video edit. I need a faster processor for faster rendering.

The video card and ram I'm planning to upgrade later. And if possible, the processor and power supply unit years down the road.

The Dell you are looking at will be better. The graphics card is better if you upgrade it. The processor you will see the biggest difference. See my recommendations below. Maybe step it up to an XPS, worth checking into.
You Sony is probably not going to be easy to upgrade or worth it. In order to upgrade your processor, you will have to upgrade the MB, and then everything else just follows and needs upgraded. You would essentially be building a new pc in an old case. A new Dell will have the same problem in a few years as it will be a pain to upgrade it. You may want to consider building your own pc since you have one now that works. You could end up with a system better than the Dell easy for about the same or little more than the Dell.
I would say stick with 2 GB mem unless you run XP/Vista 64 bit, then 4 GB, and at least a Core 2 Duo processor. The video card you would be better off with something like the 8600 series Nvidia or higher with at least 512 mb of mem on it.
Maybe check into a custom built pc also. Hope this helps.

 

[mfmvq83]

If i was doing heavy video editing i would honestly use a mac (dont kill me). You have the option of all the adobe products and also apple's final cut products. You can do video editing on a pc. its just my preference to do it on a mac. Either way 2gb ram and a dual core processor and a decent graphics card