Couple of questions about budget pc

The big question is what you want the computer for. Unless you have some serouis requirements then Dell have some good prices for systems with a TFT monitor

http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic.aspx/tv/uk/en/fy2005_q3_consumer?c=uk&cs=ukdhs1&l=en&s=dhs

Olly

All PC's are upgradeable. the problem is that people leave it too late to upgrade and find that the cpu socket is no longer being used and things have moved on and to another design and faster cpus. so to upgrade you either buy the fastest cpu your board will support or replace the motherboard, cpu and usually memory its an upgrade but costs a bit more than just replacing the cpu. The better one of the 2 would be the one witht he new AM2 socket AMD should be using that socket for a few more months (yeah AMD change sockets alot more than Intel I think.

SLi is the ability to use 2 graphics cards for extra performance. Boards being SLi cablable have 2 PCIe 16 slots on them to take the 2 cards.
while were on Graphics the Nvidia 7300GS is a few generations ago but will be fine for some gameing just dont expect blistering performance. the cards arent too expensive about £40 you could use SLi but is a bit of a waste as it is an older chip

As for a monitor the pc's dont specify that it is included the cheapest LCD monitor about is this one from scan when it is on their daily special offers page it is below £100 inc VAT or check out Aria deal for the day they always seem to have at least 1 17" TFT for under £100 there is 1 on there today.

Good value? for me no but that is because I would build it myself and the components would be cheaper but you are paying for someone to build it the warrenty and the Windows XP licence.

Ok after reading your reply
Autocad, if you want to use that at home unless they have changed the way it is licenced you will need to buy it Last time i sold a copy was autocad 14 and it used a hardware dongle on the LPT port the software was about £2500 so tell her to go jump and save a fortune not having to but a higher spec pc to run it. I would also recomend you go for an intell cpu if your considering using Autocad on it Dual core would also benifi from it I think now.
What do you use the PSP for? transfering files to the PSP? any windows 2000/XP machine should do that without crashing maybe there is a problem with your operating system if that is causing you problems.

Little_John wrote:

Autocad, if you want to use that at home unless they have changed the way it is licenced you will need to buy it Last time i sold a copy was autocad 14 and it used a hardware dongle on the LPT port the software was about £2500 so tell her to go jump and save a fortune not having to but a higher spec pc to run it.

Good point. OP, does your other half get a license via work? Does she remote into her machine at work?

Little_John wrote:

I would also recomend you go for an intell cpu if your considering using Autocad on it Dual core would also benifi from it I think now.

Why Intel? Isn't AutoCAD largely a lot of floating point calculations in which case an AMD would be more favourable? Actually even when rendering I've seen dual core Athlons outperform Intel Pentium D's by quite a way. Plus you effectively get more bang for your buck with AMD.