i'm going to buy a pc for my new house

1 gig proccessor is nice, 256 ram is neccesary, most of the other stuff will be standard , soundcard, graphics etc.. pcpro magazine and website is always a good place for recomendations.. http://www.pcpro.co.uk look for "the a list"

is this supposed to be on ile?!

anyway i know v little about this except that internal cd writers are absolutely fine, and i'm sure you what at least 256mb ram + 40gb hard drive...

yea, this was supposed to be on ile

well what do you want to do with your computer?

main thing is for broadband internet access and cdburning, but photoshop and scanner too. probably going to get back into doing music stuff on there as well when i get settled

Get a powerbook mac mate. They absolutely rip the shit outta everything else. The midrange model will suffice for what you want to use it for and the built in burner/DVD reader is superfast (tho maybe you should hold off until they bring outthe CD/DVD reader/writer version which is prob. imminent).

I have one and I have to say it is an absolute animal - the cherry on top is the operating system OSX which is still ahead of the software developers who are trying to wrap their heads around its capabilities. But graphics packages like photoshop are developed with Mac users in mind and Adobe graphics works alwys seem to translate better to Mac than PC.

The downside with the G4 powerbook is price (upwards of £2000) and ISP. At present, I believe only Demon is compatible with OSX mail services which is pricey. You can use all other ISP if you switch your operating system to OS9 (which is simple to do and quick) but if you are patient, the other ISP will be up to speed (if they are not already).

To sum up, its sleek, sexy, fucking fast (I mean really fast) and ridiculously user friendly. It loves graphics and music programmes and the midrange model (which I have) with 30GB of HD does everything you want.

Have a look at the thing here:

http://www.apple.com/uk/powerbook/

(sorry about the ad)

Any PC will do what you want, so just spend what you want, though more memory (more than 256MB) is more useful than a too big hard disk (more than 40GB), and computer speed isn't much dependent on processor speed any more, so don't bother worrying.

But get one with a PROPER GRAPHICS CARD. If you see the words "intel", "integrated" or "shared" anywhere near the graphics specs, stay away. They should mention NVidia or Geforve or ATI or some other brand name if it is a proper card.

macs have the large draw back of not having many p2p programs..

does this look alright?

Intel Pentium 4 2.5GHz Processor
512Mb DDR RAM
80Gb Hard Drive
16x DVD-ROM
32x CD-ReWriter
64Mb ATi Radeon 7500 LE Graphics
MS Windows XP Home Edition + Star Office
17 inch monitor (15.7 viewable screen)

its a Microstar and its £799 inc VAT. i was thinking of spending more like 600 but this seems good. or does it? people who know about computers your help is needed!

It's kind of weird that they'd put that configuration together with a whole pile of good components, and then wuss out on the graphics card: if you can get them to bump up the Radeon to an 8500 then you'll be in a much better place if you want to do serious graphics work (ala photoshop) or play any video games. (Unfortunately, the graphics card now seems to be the most expensive component in a system apart from the processor.) Everything else looks like a go, though.

i shall be getting one when i get back from america.

where is a good place to buy pcs. the one above was at pcworld, but they don't have it anymore (might have different stock again when i get back), any other retailers you can recommend?

i got my pc! i got a medion, its more or less the same spec as the microstar and the same price. my credit card hurts!