best desktop

[OrangeHopper]

" ... drugged-up graphical designers and geeky effects animators ... "

Ah, at last, I now know what I am!

Not sure what you were using but I can count the number of times my OS X applications have crashed since it came out x years ago on one hand.

Can't say the same for the industry standard stuff I have to put up with at client sites.

[mcquiggd]

Have a look at www.overclockers.co.uk.

I always build my own - have a water cooled Pentium IV running at 3.8 Ghz. Its silent, which is nice.

[mcquiggd]

Well, it does have an aluminum case, 4 gigs of RAM, and 1.5 terabytes of disk space... (128 meg 4 channel caching controller and 10,00rpm disks).

Those, of course, are the minimum specs for running Visual Studio 2005 at a reasonable speed.

Or Notepad REALLY quickly.

[Durbs]

I'd second www.overclockers.co.uk, best prices, best service and best kit.

Go for one of the AMD opteron procs and a decent mobo that allows you to tweak the speeds and you'll get a monster of a pc for a decent price.

[mcquiggd]

Their 'barebones' systems and bundles are usually good relative value..


I think AMD have indeed pulled rank in terms of price / performance... but an overclocked P4 with hyperthreading still kicks ass....

I tend to build my own comps as its much better to tailor them... database servers, app servers, and development workstations are all completely different beasts .... and although VMWare and others are good products, having the real deal is usually best.