PC recommendations?

Milkman

Hi all,

A non tech minded mate of mine is looking to spend about 2k on a PC. He is veering towards blowing it all on a Dell 8200.
He needs reasonable sound, DVD, a RW, TV out and a printer. XP/2k and MSOffice.

Any one got any insights or recommendations?

Mac

davidclayton

for the least amount of hassle get a dell.
otherwise it'll come back to bite you in the ass.
...just make sure you get the radeon 9800pro upgrade, think its an extra €150 or so.


dave
p.s. if this mate plays games, don't bother with the lcd screen. the responce time is not the best [about 25ms i think] and would be better off with a 19" crt.

Woden

if he wants a nice fancy system to impress his mates for €2000 you could get something nice from www.alienware.co.uk

Sleipnir

Or aipcs
they do ship to Ireland (or did the last time I checked anyway)

davros

I've recently gone for a Dell too, after comparing it to what I could get from the likes of Komplett and Elara (not to start a debate or anything - I also value the convenience).

I would recommend sourcing the LCD screen (if you are going for that) and printer separately though. You can get better quality elsewhere. I was surprised to find I could get a desktop machine from Dell without a screen but it was possible.

By the way, some LCD response times are down to 16ms now. I don't know if that is sufficient for games.

quarryman

I don't know if that is sufficient for games.

more than sufficient. there's a few other things to take into account when buying a TFT but this is the main one.

BigEejit

You want to watch what companies claim about response times ... I was reading somewhere (tomshardware.com??, anandtech??) that some companies (all?) have started measuring the response time from 10% to 90% ... forget what they called the rating .... Also they measure the fastest response time (colour response time can be a lot different to black to white response time) .... do research (not at tomshardware though ) and find out how the lcd you intend getting copes with games ... or see it in person is best ...

[edit] heavy going but extremetech has an interesting article here ....[/edit]

Milkman

thanks guys.
Airpc and Alienware are a bit OTT for him!
He is just going to go with a dell for ease... I know I know.

adios
M.