Will this Dell do the Job?

My mother, a working artist with two computers at work, (81 yrs. old,

looks and acts a really good 65 years old)is going to buy a Dell for

home. (I am saving for the BIG MAC). We will all be using the

machine most likely...her three artists daughters. Or at least two of

us will. (We all have our own computers-two sisters with a Dell, and

me with my G3 OS 9.1, but my monitor won't work with my G3 anymore

for some reason...and I hate to use the tiny leftover monitor I had

from the old days, and am too lazy or too poor to get a new one.)

<p>

I taught my mother to use the Dell...she works for the schoolboard

and they had a contract with them....so I work with both Mac and

PC....and yes, I love the Mac.

<p>

So, finally, to my questions....if there are any of you out there

familiar with PC's and Bill Gates, could you look over these Dell

specs and see if we're going to be set okay for work.

<p>

Our work will be heavy use of PhotoShop 7 (for now...), some use of

Painter, Illustrator,and probably "Coffee Cup FTP" ( which I have

grown fond of while using a PC). We will have a need to burn CD's

and DVD's. My sister is a wedding videographer, and I am trying to

convince her to edit her tapes on the computer...she still works

using two VCR's or whatever...and I will teach her, so we will use a

program like that also on the Dell.

<p>

(Sorry for being so conversational....but it seemed to fit with the

request for review of the specs!)

<p>

<a href="http://www.geocities.com/vwillendorf/Dellspecs.jpg">CLICK

HERE TO SEE THE SPECS</A>

<P>

Thank you very much for looking this over and commenting. We live in

a very small town, far away from other artists...well, other artists

use Macs-hope I'm not offending anyone here.....and it's good to know

there is somewhere to turn for opinions and advise.....

<a href="http://www.geocities.com/vwillendorf/Dellspecs.html">CLICK HERE FOR DELL SPECS, larger</a>

Bump the ram up from 512mb to 1GB and you will be fine. This is a good base system for photo and video editing. Fast processor, fast ram, fast hard drive and pretty good video card. The only thing I didn't see was what monitor or monitors you will be getting. Do yourself a favor and get a decent size crt or better yet two. I'm pretty sure that video card will do dual monitors.

Yes you should be fine with those specs. Pretty much 1gig cpu or higher, 512mhz ram or higher, cd burner, 17in monitor or better, and 64 or better video card you are fine.

 

You can do as much on a mac as you can pc these days, i do prefer mac though, but still a pc with the right hardware can still compete. SO that Dell and a Mac on a network will benefit greatly

I too would suggest going to a gig of RAM. If you're buying the 3ghz processor and want to last a while a gig of ram affords some laziness when it comes to upgrades in the future. Otherwise that looks pretty good.

Add a second hard drive to store your images. Keep all you applications on the system / (C: drive) and your images/data on the second drive. Improves performance dramatically in photoshop especially when working with multiple layers.

 

The upgraded Radeon Pro video card is probably overkill for photoshop/image editing. Unless you plan on doing some serious 3d animation / gaming with this machine I would stick with the base GeForce card (Nvidia products tend to be more stable in my opinion as well)

 

Also recommend going to 1 gig of ram.

I concur with more RAM and the second hard drive. Photoshop likes to write its scratch disk to a drive other than the one the operating system resides on.

 

Also, you can't have enough hard drive space or RAM. My machine has 2Gb of RAM and two 120 Gb hard drives - wish I had more of both. You really don't need XP Pro unless you are going to network the computers. I use both XP pro and XP home edition. The home edition boots up faster and seems to handle graphics a bit better - but that could also be the far superior graphics card I have compared to my work computer.

 

If mom is going to have multiple applications open, you will need more RAM. Photoshop can take a 130 Mb file (scanned image)and make it nearly a gigabyte file with only a few layered adjustments.

Thank you...I got better answers than I hoped for!

<P>

I ordered the computer today...I upped the Ram to 1 GIG, but even with notes in front of me, I forgot to mention the second harddrive...I will call about that first thing in the morning, because I realized that must be the problem with one of Mamma's computers at her work.....it is always (Lately) saying there is not enough room in the scratch disk.....(but then again, could that be all my folders of Nikon Coopix 5000 photo downloads from the camera?!!-I think I'm up to folder 123 now! I'm making a dent in them..I've burned about half of them to disks now...)

<P>

But thank you again for all this help.....I feel a lot more confident with the order after your reviews.

Last time I tried to change an order they couldn't do it. Anyway, it's pretty easy to add a second hard drive, I've done it on both my Dell Dimensions. And Western Digital add-on hard drives have a good reputation and are easy enough to add (IMHO). You might price them at local stores (look for ad specials, chains run them regularly) when comparing with Dell.

no, save for a mac!!!!!

i don't care what people say, your going to be slow on a pee cee and if you are use to

a mac you will go crazy!!!!!

you can do everything easier on a mac.

pee cee is for the other side of the brain, you just can't get programs to work the

same and if you are a speed freak you can't use your command keys!!!!!!!!

my life would be lost without my command keys!!

 

 

 

"now if i just had a command z for life!!"