New PC Decisions

Fleeting_Glimpse

My PC is 9 years old now and the monitor didn't like moving house and has gone weird.

Decided to go for a Dell for around £350.

For this money I have the option of either a 19" Value monitor or a 17" 'ultra sharp' monitor.

Has anybody got any experience of 'ultra sharp' monitors? Can you really tell the difference?

I do do a lot of photography so if it really does make a difference I'll go for one...otherwise I'll go for the larger 19".

The other thing I noticed, this past few days Dell now give you the option of having XP or Vista on your new machine. Is this because of 'vista niggles' or the RAM problem of needing 'at least' 1MB?
I was gonna go with Vista but having 2MB took the price to over £400 so I think I'll stick with XP and 1MB.

Any views?

Cheers

Leigh

albertross_2

1Gig is fine on Vista.

You get the choice, because some people are scared to move to Vista (or may have valid reasons.. a bit of hardware without a driver etc.), so Dell are just meeting the demand.

For an average punter, I don't see the point of buying last years model, if you are paying the same price. XP will reach it's end of life many years before Vista does.

Fleeting_Glimpse

Thanks...I do photo editing with large RAW files ( or rather would like to, using jpeg at moment cus pc just about manages with them) so I don't want the PC to go on a 'go slow'..if you know what I mean.

Would 1MB with vista be able to cope?

My current PC is a Fujitsu 600Mhz 192Mb RAM with 15" Monitor

albertross_2

I wouldn't have thought you will have a problem,,how big are the files, if you are talking 100's of MB each, then the PC may start to swap memory to the page file, but I doubt they are that big. It's going to be far better than your existing PC. (have you bent the vga pins on the monitor cable?).

johnllew

This Dual Core Dell comes with the 19" TFT plus 2 Gb of RAM and Vista for £329 delivered (with warranty reduced to 12 months).

http://configure.euro.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?b=&c=uk&cs=ukdhs1&l=en&oc=D05E02a

I have both basic and Ultrasharp 19" monitors - there's not a lot in it, though the Ultrasharp does have height adjustment and USB inputs.

Go through a cashback site to get an extra discount.

Fleeting_Glimpse

johnllew wrote: »

This Dual Core Dell comes with the 19" TFT plus 2 Gb of RAM and Vista for £329 delivered (with warranty reduced to 12 months).

http://configure.euro.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?b=&c=uk&cs=ukdhs1&l=en&oc=D05E02a

I have both basic and Ultrasharp 19" monitors - there's not a lot in it, though the Ultrasharp does have height adjustment and USB inputs.

Go through a cashback site to get an extra discount.

Big thanks for that! Where was that deal???? Couldn't find that one.

Thanks for monitor advice too.

My files sizes would be 10MB RAW images.

albertross_2

10 Meg on a 1Gig system is peanuts.

https://www.dmxdimension.com

johnllew

Fleeting_Glimpse wrote: »

Big thanks for that! Where was that deal???? Couldn't find that one.

It was at Rpoints: http://www.rpoints.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=1123769

Fleeting_Glimpse

The evalue code on that deal won't enter..unless I'm doing it wrong.

Can I just paste the link from a 'quidco' opened dell page?

sevlow

I'm a keen photographer also and do a lot of RAw work in the likes oh Photoshop Lightroom, Nikon Capture NX and Elements. I opted for a Dell Dimension E521/Athlon 64 Dual Core 5000 cpu & 2gb Ram and am more than pleased with the performance.

I opted for the 20" wide US plat panel monitor which I love. I had read reviews which noted issues with viewing angle etc but my model is superb.

Incidently I could not find the exact spec of system I wanted for my budget and phoned dell and manged to get £50 off and faster ram

BillScarab

I'm sure the 19" value monitor will be fine but personally I think the monitor is one area where you should try not to cut corners. You spend a lot of time looking at thtme so you want the best you can afford. I would have thought if you are a keen photgrapher the Ultra Sharp may be better although 17" is not very big for a new monitor these days.

Also if you are a photographer definately go for Vista ( so long as your camera is supported), the built in apps for handling photos are much better than in XP. One feature I really like is that you can tag an image with multiple tags so finding images is much easier.