Need to buy a new PC, please help

[timh]

Dell's next-day onsite warranty is, from my experience, great. (As a business customer, anyway.)

My experience of Evesham was a bit iffy, a few years ago - might have got better now. My current client apparently had a nightmare with Mesh, last year. For reliability I'd stick with Dell (because if it breaks they fix it) or IBM/Lenovo (because it probably won't break).

[ChimpMaster]

Evesham is very pricey even compared to Dell.

Am still thinking Mesh - very good value and although they had service problems that was a couple of years back and now they have on-site engineers within 3 days.

Dell also looks good.... I already have a Latitude so might just become a Dell shop lol.

[Jog On]

I'm looking to get one of these HP/Compaq's with a 19" screen.

This one comes with XP - it's a got a PCI express graphics port though - at a glance for £319.97 inc VAT:

Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor 651 with HT Technology 3.40 GHz, 2 MB L2 cache, 800 MHz front side bus
Windows XP Professional SP2
Windows Vista Premium ready
ATI Radeon Xpress 200 chipset
Standard memory 1 x 1 GB
DDR2-Synch DRAM PC2-5300
Memory slots 2 DIMM
Expandable to 2 GB through two industry-standard DIMM slots
HD 160 GB
Hard disk drive speed 7200 rpm
External drive bays 2 external 5.25 inch and 1 external 3.5 inch
Internal drive bays 2 internal 3.5 inch
DVD+/-RW 16x LightScribe and HP Media Card Reader 16-in-1 (3.5" with PCI)
Hard disk controller SATA 3.0 Gb/s
No Floppy Disk Drive

I'm thinking of getting 2 - one for me and one for the company secretary

[cojak]

Evesham have a good reputation for quality of build and service.

They'll be on my shortlist the next time I need a desktop.

[richy_rich]

Guys

What about Mesh, something like :-

http://www.meshcomputers.com/Default...UCT&KEY=197244

It seems to have everything I need (apart from MS Office...)

My current PC is Mesh, it's been good for the past 5 years, apart from being noisy!

Mesh got slated on Watchdog on Wed night for terrible customer service so consider this....

http://www.bbc.co.uk/consumer/tv_and...20070502.shtml

RR.

[ChimpMaster]

Guys

What about Mesh, something like :-

http://www.meshcomputers.com/Default...UCT&KEY=197244

It seems to have everything I need (apart from MS Office...)

My current PC is Mesh, it's been good for the past 5 years, apart from being noisy!

[portseven]

Sun do nice x86 based workstations now, check out the Ultra 20's

http://uk.sun.com/catalog/?n-state=h...kingdomcontext

[wxman]

Monitor this link http://stores.ebay.co.uk/Dell-Outlet and pick yourself up a as new Dell for a snip of the new cost - if you are into gaming - then just go out and buy a faster graphics card.

[Clippy]

To get the below system for a cheap as chips price for a decent spec you need to upgrade the OS to Vista Business and reduce the warranty to 1 year CAR. This comes to the princely sum of £387.82 which should tide you over for most of what you want to do.

However, as you also want to play games you may want to look at upgrading the graphics and sound card using their configurator.


Dell Dimension desktop system E520 (305-D05E02a): £329.07
Intel® Core 2 Duo E4300 Processor (1.80GHz, 800MHz, 2MB)
2048MB Dual Channel DDR2 533MHz [2x1024] Memory
250GB (7200rpm) Serial ATA Hard Drive with 8MB DataBurst cache
Dell 19" Value Flat Panel (SE197FP) - UK/Irish
Integrated Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 3000
Integrated Audio with Dolby Digital 7.1 capability
16X DVD+/-RW Drive
English Genuine Windows Vista Home Basic
Dell Entry Quietkey USB Keyboard - UK/Irish (QWERTY)
Dell 2 Button USB Scroll Optical Mouse - Black
Microsoft® Works 8.0 - English

Linky: http://tinyurl.com/25w7qk

[ChimpMaster]

Not major gaming , just some Unreal Tournament and the like.

I do a lot of Stock market trading so need a fast machine for that. Internet usage will be the main thing I guess.

I want to go for a higher spec so that it'll go for the next 4 or 5 years I guess. As for self building, I am neither the time nor the patience! Wish I did but nooooo chance.

My current PC's graphics card seems to be going, the screen messes up every 30 mins or so, needing a reboot. I think something's overheating in it, cuz when I stop it and restart after a minute, it's all OK again for 30 minutes or so... bummer eh, but the last straw for this machine methinks

[timh]

Compared to a 5 year old machine, everything is going to kick arses. If gaming wasn't mentioned I'd recommend spending £350 on a bog-standard dell.

Though I suppose a beefy video card would be handy for vista too.

[snaw]

Depends how comfortable you are building your own, but if you're even remotely technical then do it yourself - for £1000 you could buy a pretty kick arse machine (Not so sure abou tpre built however)

Go to - http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/

For some real advice on what's latest and greatest for your dough. (I built mine using advice supplied from the guys on these forums, and paid almost half the price I would have from buying something equivalent from dell!!)

[timh]

What sort of online gaming..?

[ChimpMaster]

Guys & gals

I need to update my 5 year old computer and need some advice as it's been ages since I looked into this stuff.

I'd like to spend no more than £1000 and would like something with a 19" flat screen, powerful enough for occasional online gaming, and with Vista... yeah I know Vista's tulipe but I'm not gonna upgrade again for a long time so I'll have to live with the upgrades.

Any recommendations?