Want to buy a Desktop!

HI, I would like someone with good knowledge as to purchasing a good desktop. My son, wants one that he can do video tapes (i.e., editing etc.) He wants one that is fast, lots of memory (HD) etc. If anyone has any suggestions, could you please let me know. Thanks and I hope I put this message in the proper place. If I didn't please excuse my error! Debi

 

I cant believe there cannot believe that there are not a load of people with an opinion here, but my tuppence worth would be that if you want to deal with lots of media editing then the higher the HD, the RAM and the CPU the better. ALso you will need to think about how you are going to handle a VHS? input, i.e. gfx card type, input type etc. So what i am saying is that this q is not model specific, I would only browse the high end specs of HP, Toshiba etc and look for dual core + cpus over 2 Ghz, and over 2gb RAM at the very least. that said it depends how much video, what are you going to do with it and so forth. You might very well get away with a much smaller spec. I am sure lots of people will disagree with what I just said, and as I say,this is just what I would do...

 

hmmm no i agree with rik_na except I'd go for some real high spec ones especially if its video editing hes going to be doing ... how computer literate is your son?

 

As Drizzles stated, how computer literate is your son. I might also ask how old is he and how responsible?
Wouldn't want to see a top of the line machine used irresponsibly, or by someone who doesn't appreciate it's capabilities.
I would begin with a good mid-range machine at first to get a feel for his behavior and habits.

 

My son is 34. Instead of buying a new desktop, I told him to use his laptop and purchase an external HD. Since his laptop has 2 GB Ram. I told him until he upgrades his laptop he could just do it that way, since I hadn't heard back from the PC Guru's. So he bought 1 TB external HD and will play with it from there. He mainly wants to do videos of his first child born a month ago! I want to thank everyone for their replies on my question. I will let him know what all of you said to look for in a desktop! Thanks again to all that responded!

 

you really need to put this question on a video editing specific forum. I would suggest AV forums none better imo
http://www.avforums.com/forums/index.php

your son can do a perfectly acceptable job on his current laptop using Windows Movie maker which is bundled with Windows. otherwise there are plenty of software reviews and editing guides on AV forums. Good luck