Loads of Questions and Buying Help

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TicTac2

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Hi all, I am new to these forums.

At the moment I only have a laptop which is very faulty. It is not very portable either. Intend to sell it (depending on repairs e.t.c) which I reckon will leave me with about 1300 pounds ($2100) to spend on a computer system. I am in the UK

I intend to get a 14 inch laptop, but have not decided which yet. I am having more difficulty regarding how I should approach buying a desktop.

I am not sure whether I should build a computer totally buying all the motherboards and processors seperately (strongly moving away from this idea), buy the case fully fitted out with a hard drive and processor and buy the screen/keyboard/mouse seperately (strongly moving towards this idea), or buying it all in one bundle. I am still in school (15) and like ICT although obviously i am not very experienced at all in it, and am not sure whether I have the time of want to read how to build a system. I would love to knwo the answers to the following:

1)
I intend to spend around $1200 on a desktop. How much would building it with all the seperate parts save if, $1200 was for a already made system?

2)
I will use it for the following:

a) All things Office.
b) Quite a lot of photoediting in photoshop and digital photography related stuff.
c) Lots of Internet Browsing
d) Moderate Gaming (stuff like Tiger Woods 2005/6 if you've heard of it or maybe fifa and stuff. No Half Life 2 and Call of Duty 2 unless I develop a taste for these as I get older :p )
e) Quite a lot of Music Playing
f) DVD watching

I would normally have quite a lot open at the same time, but Photoshop would probably be my most intensive.

So how much do desktops that would do all the jobs above very well cost? From experience i think I would want the following:

Hard Drive over 160gb
DVD+-RW 16x
Good Speakers
NIce LCD screen (
(19 inch seems good for me in relation to size versus price for what I want). HOwever my laptop resoloution is 1650x1080 (WXSGA+). But all the TFT/LCD screens seem to have awfully low resoloutions. For the 19inch screens I would get 4 inches larger but loose 400,000 pixels? Won't I loose a lot of working space and detail in DVDs?))
NIce Keyboard and Mouse (wireless means they both need new batterys regularly?).
I really don't understand processors all that much I guess I want:
Whatever is needed to play moderately graphics demanding games, be quick in the use of Photoshop and be reliable and not too expensive. I will normally be multitasking quite a lot.

3) Does anyone know any good detailed guides on building desktops?

4) Regarding the following example:
'I want to stop working downstairs and continue to work upstairs with my laptop.' To get the work of quickly and let the 2 communicate is there a better way than to burn to a DVD and transfer over?'

5) My laptop would be 32 bit. By the fact that the desktop I would get would be more than likely 64 bit, what does this mean, and what conflicts may I have?

6) I have been looking at lots of auctions on eBay:
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/64-BIT-3500-A...733400268QQcategoryZ52475QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/P4-3-2-cpu-10...733180965QQcategoryZ14294QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Which would you consider better?
With a deal like this, stuff like sound cards need to be bought seperately, any guides on those?
Also you have to buy the OS (e.g XP Home) seperately don't you? NOne of these have them come with it I'm guessing.
I want a wireless network, for my laptop and computer, I've got a router, I'm guessing you just need a wireless card?
And with regards to this I have heard XP Professional would be better, of for my needs do you think Media Center or home would be bettter.

Any help to everything stated above would be appreciated,
Feel free to answer all or one of the questions

THanks a lot
 
How much would building it with all the seperate parts save if, $1200 was for a already made system? You won't save much money, if any, but you'll get much better parts for the same price. Unless you're just BENT on saving money... then you can buy cheap parts and save a couple hundred bucks but regret it a year later, just like with a dell or gateway or HP.

So how much do desktops that would do all the jobs above very well cost? From experience i think I would want the following:
Hard Drive over 160gb -$90
DVD+-RW 16x $50
Good Speakers-don't bother, just hook it up to a stereo system. "Nice speakers" cost hundreds
NIce LCD screen (
(19 inch seems good for me in relation to size versus price for what I want). HOwever my laptop resoloution is 1650x1080 (WXSGA+). But all the TFT/LCD screens seem to have awfully low resoloutions. For the 19inch screens I would get 4 inches larger but loose 400,000 pixels? Won't I loose a lot of working space and detail in DVDs?)) Most 19in LCD's will have 1600x1200. They're expensive, though. Not for a $1200 computer.
NIce Keyboard and Mouse (wireless means they both need new batterys regularly?).

For a processor, get a 64-bit athlon, as good as you can afford.

3) Does anyone know any good detailed guides on building desktops?

It's really simple. Just do a quick search online... don't worry about the order you hook things up, just be sure you're aware of the dangers involved. Sucks to bust a component bc of ESD.

4) Regarding the following example:
'I want to stop working downstairs and continue to work upstairs with my laptop.' To get the work of quickly and let the 2 communicate is there a better way than to burn to a DVD and transfer over?'

Use wireless networking.

5) My laptop would be 32 bit. By the fact that the desktop I would get would be more than likely 64 bit, what does this mean, and what conflicts may I have?

A lot of apps don't work for 64 bit. 64bit means that it has a 64bit address bus, meaning it can address more memory locations. The processor deals with twice as much information at once.

6) I have been looking at lots of auctions on eBay:

I wouldn't get media center for what you're looking at; I'd go with professional. Actually, home would probably be fine, but let's face it, nobody likes admitting that they have xp home ed.

Dan
 
1) In most cases, building a system will be more expensive then buying an already built system, that is unless you go around looking for sales and take your time. Finding good deals.

2) It really depends on how much music you have and photoediting youre going to do. I do alot of photoediting my self, and usually go with atleast a 250GB SATA hard drive.

As for ram, youll want atleast 1GB of ram, and I would suggest getting motherboard that supports DDR2. Since all DDR2 supporting motherboards are dual channeling, I would suggest going with 2 512MB sticks, or two 1GB sticks.

I would also suggest going with a sony DVD+-RW, they have great quality control.

Seems like you want a 64 bit processor so I would recommend eather going with an AMD 64 3200+ or better. If you want to have a dual core processor(which is also 64bit), I would recommend going with one of the AMD 64 athlon X2s, or one of Intel's Pentium Ds 820 or better.

A system like this can be pretty expensive, your looking at about $1460, considering about 2GB of ram and a Mid range dual core processor, mid range video card, 250GB sata hdd, windows XP pro, and sony DVD+-RW. Thats just for the tower.

3) Ive never seen an actual guide on building system. You just need to do research. You might be able to find a book on it.

4) A good way would be to use a network hard drive that you would be able to connect directly to your router and both computers will be able to see it. That would work pretty efficiently.

You can use a thumb drive and just take stuff to your laptop with that.

Or you can just set up a network, and have your computers hdd marked as a shared drive, and youll be able to access the stuff from your notebook, but using a hard drive connected directly to your network would be more efficient (speed wise).


5) You wont have any conflicts, eather it being 32bit or 64bit, the only thing that changes is the speed and way that information is processed, but thats just hardware. Both systems will still be the same software wise (unless your using a 64bit operating system, which may cause a few conflicts when trying to network. The only 64bit OS out there right now is Windows XP 64bit, which I would recommend avoiding).

6. For a sound card, you can just use the on-board sound on your motherboard, because the ones that come on the motherboards that support 64bit processors are pretty good. If you want an upgraded sound card though, I would suggest using any creative labs sound card that has the Audigy 2 chipset.

As for the OS, I would suggest avoiding both the media center edition, and the 64bit, because your going to be looking at alot of driver issues. Since the 64bit is pretty new, it recognizes alot of devices automaticly, but there are also alot of devices that DO NOT have driver support for it. The new OS windows vista will be released on december of 2006, so I would say wait for that to go with a 64bit OS, but for now use eather Windows XP home or Pro.
I would suggest going with Pro.

And for the wireless network, if you already have a wirless router, then yea, all youll need are the wireless cards for each computer, unless your notebook has built in wireless. Then youll only need the wireless card for you desktop. I would recommend going with "G" wireless cards which have a 54 mbs transfer rate and have good range. "G" is currently the standard. If the router that you have is a "B" router, I would recommend getting a new one. If you dont know what brand to go with. I would suggest going with eather Belkin or Linksys since they both use the same chipset and that is currently the best chipset out there for router that you can get at the retail level. I would say going with Linksys though because Belkin has poor quality control so your pretty likely to bump into a defective router or card. It is ok to mix brands though, so dont feel like you have to stick with one brand for everything.

I think ive answered all your questions. Hope all that helps.
 
Im actually selling a pretty nice bundle that I got from intel, which has windows xp pro (full) a Pentium D 820 processor, a motherboard to support it and photoshop elements and premiere elements. You can PM me if your intrested.
 
Wow, thanks for the huge effort and help, I will probably have some more questions soon, but at the moment you were so helpful!

That sounds interesting mikieboi86 but at this point I am still not quite sure what way I should go. I happen to have elements already but if I become more interested I will PM you.

Thanks again to all
 
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