Buying New PC: Suggestions

Get a Mac. I work in IT with PC's all day and come home to my problem free Mac at night. A little more money - a lot less hassle.

Woot.com has a nice one today....

I would absolutely recommend buying a pc from Tigerdirect or NCIX.com. NCIX will let you pick your parts and even put it together for 50 bucks. They'll also match any price from a rival website.

Being a novice computer Geek, I think there are a lot of good points here. I think Tank hit the specs dead on. I'll throw some more stuff at ya. Windows or mac - Personal preference. Spend a little time and put your hands on both. Most stores have demos out so you can look at and work with Win7 and Apple OS. Most "Peripherals" will have an "Apple" Software version and Apple has there own stuff. Pick the one you like best. Desktop or Laptop - Personal preference. I personally think the Desktop is better suited for the Office based tasks. Full keyboards, larger Monitors and more usable area on the Desk or work area for paper and books gives them the edge. A docking station can turn a laptop into a Desktop and is a great way to get both, but it will cost more. Software - Regardless of PC or Mac you will want Office 07 suite. They are expensive unless you get a system that includes a full version. If anyone in your house is attending a higher education of some sort you can get the top of the line suite directly from Microsoft for next to nothing. The GF got Office ultimate for around $40.00 and Win 7 for less then $50 Worst (Best) Buy has good sales from time to time but Wal-Mart has good Non-Gaming Comps for cheap. Online may be your best bet for getting the lowest price.

Our last computer we bought was for doing pretty much those exact things. We wanted a laptop though so we could do everything on the road as well as at home but keep it all on one computer rather than have to share drives at home. We ended up with a MacBook as it was easy to use and had pretty much everything built in except for Office. All I did is bought 2 external drives (a 1TB for backup and a 500GB for all the pictures and video) and my wife got Office through her work for cheap. Once the new MacBook Pro's come out we will think about buying another one and giving our old one to y computer illiterate mom who can't use a PC but, can use the Mac like nothing.

The only thing about a Macbook though is the price and the lack of options if J-cat to upgrade later. She can buy a pc with a good cpu and and power supply now and if down the road she wants to beef her pc into something that can play games she has options for just about any budget available to her.

J, my suggestion would be to see if there isn't a good condition Pentium 4 system around you someplace...they're still relatively recent as far as hardware is concerned, and if you decided to do any upgrading in the future it could still be done. We use P4s where I work at for data terminals, and they seem to work just fine for basic things such as what you described. I'm not an IT guy, so be smart and REALLY do your homework!

Get a MAC, screw WINDOWS!!!! LOL

First of all, get a laptop. If you really want a bigger screen, pick up a $100 20" LCD. Secondly, check the deal sites for last year's model. It will be plenty fast, have enough storage and be a hellava lot cheaper than this year's model.

you go to best buy and say, "dude, sell me a PC." see what he shows you, write it down, tell him you have to think about it. go to tigerdirect.com and look for the same / similar pc's and save 20%. for what you are doing, most any run of the mill pc is going to be plenty of power. p.s. don't buy a vista operating system.

For processor i'd say you don't really need anything better than an Intel Core i3 based system. There is also i5 and i7 but from what you're saying you need it for, those would be overkill and wasted money spent. You'll want WIndows 7 Home Premium 64bit to come with it, not the cheaper home basic and likewise you don't need the more expensive Professional or ultimate versions. You'll need a minimum for 2gigs of ram to come with it. An integrated 'intel' video card will help keep the price down. If you start getting into ATI or Nvidia graphics cards they're probably skewing the system towards being a gaming pc and the price will go up accordingly. Bestbuy looks like they have a Gateway and HP model that are core I3 based .

My mother in law just bought a Dell from Best Buy. $499 + tax. It has more power than some servers I used to buy for 1/4 the price.