Scottish Elises

Not the top spec, naturally, but pretty good for the money.

At time of writing, this is the deal:

Dell Inspiron 1300
Intel® Celeron® M Processor 380 (1.60 GHz, 1MB L2 Cache, 400 MHz FSB)
Genuine Windows® XP Home Edition, SP2 (incl Operating System Re-Installation CD)
Collect & Return support, 90 Day Service
14.1" Wide-Screen WXGA (1280x800) TFT Display
512MB 533MHz Single Channel DDR2 SDRAM (1x512) - (don't pay over the odds with a dell upgrade here - plenty of cheaper ways!)
40GB (5,400rpm) Hard Drive - (60GB available for extra 35.25 + VAT)
CD-RW and DVD Combo
4 Cell, 29Whr Lithium Ion Primary Battery - (6 cell, longer life battery upgrade available for extra 11.25 plus VAT)

Also Includes
Dellâ„¢ Wireless 1370 802.11b/g Mini PCI Card
Microsoft Works 8.5 suite
English - Adobe Reader 8.5.8
60W AC Adapter
56.6k V.92 Capable Internal Modem & Adapter
Resource CD - contains Diagnostics and Drivers

This link should get you to the basic machine at £368.95 but if you drop the support to 90 days (click on the Support Services icon), then it becomes £298.95 delivered!

You could put another 512MB in this one for about £50 quid from Crucial

This is not an amazing spec, but it is pretty good for the money.

http://configure.euro.dell.com/dellstor ... inspn_1300

That is very cheap!

Mailed a mate who had some promo thing that offered another 7% off.

Sanjoy,

I’ve been looking for a desk top but have no idea what I should be looking for. Prepared to spend circa £5-600. Any must haves or top tips?

Cheers

Big disk (200-300gb), big memory(1024mb or more=1GB), big monitor(19 inch TFT), DVD burner, Windows XP no media centre.

Do not go celeron if you want it to run for more than say 2 years.

Dell is hard to beat.

Had figured sum of that i.e. that big numbers are good, but did not have an idea of what numbers I should have been looking for so that is very helpful.

“Windows XP no media centreâ€

Sanjoy wrote:Do not go celeron if you want it to run for more than say 2 years.

Why do you say that? My desktop is a celeron, had it 3+ years and it still runs perfectly well and does what I need it to.

[quote="Titanium S1 111S (gla)"]
“Windows XP no media centreâ€

The primary difference between Celeron class CPUs and Pentiums is the amount of cache. For most image intensive programs, the cache size is not so important (as it's too small no matter how big) and instead it's the main memory size and performance.

Now that L2 caches are 1MB, there might be some benefit to video compression (but not picture compression, which is mostly linear), but I suspect not (working set for an MP4 style encode is several MB).

So, I think that the problem with most Celeron machines is not their CPU performance but their main memory size and sometimes main memory bandwidth if they are old enough. The memory size is cheap to fix - spending 50 on memory instead of spending it on jumping from Celeron to Pentium is usually money well spent.

2p

Robin

For some reason I was stuck in the late 80s and was thinking the diff betwen SX & DX and thought it was lack of or hobbled floating point units...

http://www.howstuffworks.com/question268.htm

robin wrote:The primary difference between Celeron class CPUs and Pentiums is the amount of cache. For most image intensive programs, the cache size is not so important (as it's too small no matter how big) and instead it's the main memory size and performance.

Now that L2 caches are 1MB, there might be some benefit to video compression (but not picture compression, which is mostly linear), but I suspect not (working set for an MP4 style encode is several MB).

So, I think that the problem with most Celeron machines is not their CPU performance but their main memory size and sometimes main memory bandwidth if they are old enough. The memory size is cheap to fix - spending 50 on memory instead of spending it on jumping from Celeron to Pentium is usually money well spent.

2p

Robin

Lost me!

Hold off a few weeks and buy a new PC with Vista.

A mate has it (beta triallist) and he says its very good and even worth BUYING!!!Shock horror

Actually buying a MS operating system, whats the world coming to?

That was going to be my next question, should I wait for it? Keen to get a new machine but don’t want it to be out of date within a month. Anybody know what Vista does that XP does not. If the only difference is that it does high end stuff better then not that bothered cos I don’t do anything complicated anyway but if it really is better I’ll wait.

Also slightly concerned that Vista will be like all the other MS releases and be full of bugs for the first 18 months. Thoughts anybody.



Just seen that Dell do a free upgrade to Vista with most of their current stock.

Get yourself an Apple MAC, best decision i made in 2006 by a long shot. Have the 21" monitor core duo iMAC and it is awesome! Running Tiger and it blows XP away, and Apple are launching Leopard which is i would say way ahead of what i saw on my Vista beta trial.

Not having to worry in a big way about virus protection is also an absolute saint! Have had MAC's in the family for years, and i still have a PC at work, but the stuff you get bundled with a MAC is all you need really, and with bootcamp you can still run PC stuff on it if you want.

For home use i.e "Home machines end up with a odd game on it or watching videos, managing large mp3 collection, resizing 5 mega pixel images." The apple just integrates everything so nicely.

I will end by saying don't hang me for this comment, i know there i s fair bit of difference money wise, but a demo from the Apple guy who was in PC world at the time, a demo from my Uncle a graphics guy and programmer, was enough to persuade me and have never looked back!

Dave

My main passions in life right now: Loti, Nikons and Apple esp with the iPhone!

Rag_It wrote:Get yourself an Apple MAC

I am with him

I have got 3 Macs including a Laptop, though none a Core Duo, yet ) and they are suit me great. They come Bundled with Safari (Browser) iTunes, iDVD, iPhoto, iMovie, iCal, Quicktime, Address book and Appleworks Office Applications to mention but a few. I have a .MAC account as well so most of the above applications can synch and backup to each other online. Synchs all stuff to iPods as well very easily. About the only Apps I added were Route 66 for our Euro trip, Elgato Eye TV and an upgrade to Quicktime Pro (£20) so that I can import/export a wide variety of video types. For me a MAC does what I aways wanted my computer to do, be a simple tool in organising all my bits and stuff whether its contacts, letters, movies, music etc. The fact that its a doodle to produce web sites using any media on your computer with ease is an added bonus.

I find they work fine with other devices such as Bluetooth phones, Archos players, web cams, DV Cameras and even have one wired up to a Video Recorder though Firewire so can watch/record TV through iMove or Quicktime Pro. Mine all connect to the Internet fine via a Wanadoo LIVEBOX which said it didn't even support MACS.

Plus of course the major feature over XP is not worrying about viruses every time your computer even sniffs the Internet.

Very easy to get a discount (not that big though) on MACS via their Education Shop
http://store.apple.com/Apple/WebObjects/ukInd
and many people will easily qualify, not that they seem to check anyway.

While they can be pricey to buy, they do however hold their price well, I once sold an iBook for a loss of only 8% on cost new after six months use If you have a Keyboard, Monitor and Mouse then a MAC Mini might be the answer to some people's needs at £375 incl Vat .