Computer is almost dead 2

My old Dell is almost dead...I am going to order a new computer. But I am going to need your help. I just need a system to run my eBay business, that's excel and Quickbooks Pro, some photos for posting, limited music downloads and as usual...surfing. I do not play games or do graphics and I really don't want to look at TV or play movies. My questions:

1. Combo DVD/DVD RW or two seperate drives
2. Do I need a 1EEE1349 Adapter
3. How much storage
4. 64 bit processor
5. Dual Core Pentium D
6. How much RAM

Please remember, I need just an airplane and not a rocket.

 

Go for a Core 2 Duo rather than the Pentium D, the cheapest is only about $250 and it has great performance. 512mb of RAM should be fine for what you're doing. Hard drive space really depends on how much music u want and what eles you're going to store on there. A 160-200gig HDD should be plenty tho (made by Seagate or Western Digital) Dont really know much about good DVD drives so thats where other people come in

 

In my opinion you dont even need a duel core, unless you run benchmarks all day you will not know the difference[ not enough software designed for them to work with yet] I would get a single core,[unless you WANT a duel core] anything above 2 gig, Liteon and NEC seems to be awful good dvd burners. ed

 

Core poo


aumaker you can get a Kick ass AMD Athlon 64bit CPU for about $100 couple that with an NF4 mobo ( excellant performance too )

The best Bang for your Buck will be an Athlon 64 & NF4 chipset mobo!

aumaker? are you planing on building your own PC or off the shelf system?

I bought a OEM NEC 3550a CD/DVD multi format burner from Newegg for $27, It's Awsome by the way.

 

I am going to buy one off the shelf...Don't know enough to build one myself.

 

you can try looking at what gateway has or dell

my gateway is duel core i use it most for images and videos and gameing

or try Ibuypower web site http://www.ibuypower.com

theve have it set up to were theve can build any pc to what your looking for

 

How much do you want to spend?
Do you need Monitor/LCD, Details will help you find the best deal.

Best buy usually has few good buys

 

You have stated the parameters that you would like, why not go to the Dell site and configure one?

What is your budget? For what you do you do not need much power. Why 64 bit?

I would suggest two optical drives...one can be just a reader. May want to copy DVD's CD's.
1394 is FireWire. Do you intend on connecting any FireWire devices?
How much storage do you need? How much do you have now? More storage can make your backup solution more complicated. What is your backup solution?
RAM? Should go with at least 1 GB but unless you plan on doing something more with your PC, then thats probably overkill.

 

Check out the Dell Deals on these websites each day:

www.techbargains.com/dellcoupons.cfm
www.slickdeals.net
www.gotapex.com

At Dell Small Business, you can get a Dimension 5150 with a Dual Core Pentium D, 1Gb of RAM, an 80Gb hard drive, and a 19" LCD for $549. That's a pretty good deal.

For us to suggest a computer that will fit your needs, you'll have to tell us what you use it for? Word processing and internet? Editing videos? Gaming?

 

I'm not sure that my reply went through so here it is again. I don't need the computer for gaming, editing videos, graphics or watching TV/movies. I do need it to run a one man bussiness which only means QuickBooks Pro, Accounting Assistant, Excel, downloading a little music, coping data from one CD to another, minor photo editing, and internet. Dell Small Business suggested the configuration, but I think they are trying to sell me much more computer than I need...I need this or that for upcoming changes in Microsoft and on and on. I need dual core, storage space is cheap, so why not get more ( I now have a whopping 20.4GB HD), 1GB RAM is a must. I don't even know what a FireWire is nor do I have a backup solution! What should I have for a backup solution? That's why I need help. I can spend up to $2K but all I need is a good computer to see me through the next few years.

Tom

 

If I were you then, I would go with that Dimension 5150 @ Dell Small Business for $549. It will do everything you need.

 

Sounds like you run your business off of your one computer, so backup is essential. I would suggest some external hard drive device like Western Digital 120 GB My Book <$120. I like the My Book because it turns itself off when you shut down your system, but there are others. I would also suggest Second Copy as your automatic backup software at around $25. You would set up Second Copy to copy all of your "variable" data, not software, to your external drive.

Some of the other suggestions here for a system are good ones. I to, would go with Dell and get a two year in home/business warranty. In that way you can contact them to come out and fix your machine. I would assume you could get a pretty nice Dell machine, external hard drive and backup software under $1200 easily.

 

Thanks for the info on the backup....I live in constant horror that this machine will die before I get the new one.

 

So I would need the Second Copy to copy to the Western Digital?

 

Correct. Second Copy would copy files from your system to the external hard drive.

Please note. There are several good backup solutions out there Acronis Trueimage and Retrospect come to mind but for the smaller user a product with a pretty simple user interface and the abiltiy to automatically backup, Second Copy seems to do nicely.

To formulate your backup plan, you need to identify the location of that critical "variable" data. Think about what data you would need to get you back operational if your system's hard drive crashed or your motherboard burned up. The "fixed" data, the programs for example, need not be backed up because you have the CD's for all of them.

Lets take QuickBooks for an example. If you did a good job backing up your QuickBooks database file. You could save off those backup databases to your external hard drive with Second Copy. Then in the event of a disaster, you could reinstall QuickBooks and restore the backup database off of your external drive and away you go.

 

You don't NEED Second Copy, but what backup software like that does for you is gives you a user interface to easily backup your data. You can set it to backup certain files or folders at certain intervals. (daily, weekly, monthly, etc.) Windows also has a free, built in backup utility. Depending on what extras you need, it may be enough. If I were you, I'd just use Windows backup for a while and if you find you need the extra functionality of a full-featured backup program, go for it.

 

One of the main features of Second Copy is that it backs up ONLY files that have changed. Windows BACKUP will back up everything every time.

After the initial backup Second Copy will run in seconds to minutes and Windows BACKUP will run in many minutes.

Also the restore from Windows BACKUP is a little confusing especially when you are under pressure.

Its your business.....the choice is yours.