Is this computer good enough for pp/storage?

[dan_hall4]

Thanks for all the help. I just ordered the Dell Inspiron 530 with 22" monitor. With $100 off and the free shipping, it came out to $1309. I got the E8200 duo processor, Windows XP, 4 gb ram at 800 mhz, 750 gb hard drive, 16x dvd burner, Radeon ATI HD 2600 256 mb video card, and also added the 1394 port. This should be quite an improvement on my 3 year old IBM laptop. I appreciate all the insights shared here that made this purchase possible.

 

Dan

[colinsouthern]

"I just ordered the Dell Inspiron 530 with 22" monitor. With $100 off and the free shipping, it came out to $1309. I got the E8200 duo processor, Windows XP, 4 gb ram at 800 mhz, 750 gb hard drive, 16x dvd burner, Radeon ATI HD 2600 256 mb video card, and also added the 1394 port. "

 

No no no no no no no!

 

(just kidding :) - Congrats on the impending arrival! - just remember the three most important things:

 

1. Backup your data

 

2. Backup your data

 

3. Have fun (ha ha tricked ya - #3 is really "Backup your data!")

 

Cheers,

 

Colin

[dan_hall4]

"No no no no no no no! "

 

Colin you can be cruel. You know how much I value your opinion. You got me. Felt my gut drop straight through my A$$. Ha ha. I spent three days agonizing over this purchase.

[garrison_k.]

"E8200 duo processor"

 

No no no no no no no!

 

Just kiiding. Have fun, congrats on the new box, Dan. It'll fly. Consider getting it re-formatted though, making a couple partitions, put your OS on a small partition and do an image.

[dan_hall4]

When you start speaking English, I will gladly reply.

[garrison_k.]

Pardon? Nice way to treat someone that's taken half an hour of their day for you. Dells' don't need anti-virus software, by the way. Understand that?

[maiwand]

Hi Dan,

 

500GB hard drive may sound huge, but if you're going to be shooting "only in RAW" I would get something bigger...

[lauren_macintosh]

Dan Hall: As soon as funds become availibale for me my, next puter will be: A quad core 2.4mgz with a max of 8megs of ram but will start with 4megs of ram , with net work 1000/100/10 and simple audio card or built in, and 512meg Vidio Card popwer supply 600 watts this is not for gaming but to handle my Photographs and Light room and photoshop, oh forgot hard drive 500megs with external h/d as back up!

I have a Viewsonic VA1912wb I am very happy with

[lmphotos]

I feel like a traitor.. I bought a Mac.. I do have to say I do not miss my PC at all. I have a Core Duo and I run Vista on the other side.. We never use it. I asked the same question about 2 years ago and the answer was unanimously Mac, if I wanted to start photography.

[chiefkeefe]

I've built my last 2 home computers (I had to start from scratch basically and build another one when I "upgraded" to Vista). Vista is fine on a new system and most of the bugs have been worked out even on my upgraded version. Glad to see that you got the 22" monitor. That's the absolute minimum size for working with photos in my opinion.

 

As far as the Mac topic, if I hadn't spent so much time/effort/$ on this syetm, I would definitely be looking at a Mac. The Mac OS and applications run like greased lightning compared to PC/Vista.

 

With that said, you purchased a solid system and should greatly enjoy working with it relative to that old IBM "Stinkpad".

[dan_hall4]

Garrison,

 

" Nice way to treat someone that's taken half an hour of their day for you"

 

I was trying to say that I don't understand the jargon. An insult to my intelligence if you will. A joke. Count the times in this thread where I said "Thank you". I certainly appreciate your help.

 

I appreciate ALL the help.

 

Also,

 

I called Dell just a few hours ago and had the order updated to the 24" Dell Ultrasharp monitor. I talked to half the people in India to do it. With my southern accent, you can imagine how smoothly things went trying to verify the whole order with addresses again. Hoping it will be better than the 22" Dell standard lcd. Any opinions on this? Or did I just waste $320?

[dan_hall4]

Garrison says..

 

"Dells' don't need anti-virus software, by the way. Understand that?"

 

I did not get the security software or Microsoft Works. I just got it with XP. Thanks!

[garrison_k.]

thanks for clarifying, Dan. Text on a monitor can be taken out of context sometimes.

 

I love my 24" Dell but it's one of the old orginal ones that is true 8 bit. They're bright, be prepared.

 

Kaspersky gets my nod for anti-virus.

[dan_hall4]

Thanks Garrison.

 

Anyone else have any thoughts on the 24" Dell Ultrasharp monitor? I hope I did not overspend for no good reason. It was a little over my budget when I added the Ultrasharp 24". Actually, I had went over my budget with the 8200 processor and 4 gb ram at 800 mhz. But I trust your opinons. It would be crazy to waste all this info by buying the entry level components. Any thoughts on the monitor. Anything I need to do when it comes in. I read in another thread "Which Dell monitor", that the Dell monitors did not come in the native.. or something or the other. As you could guess, I have no clue what that meant. Anything I need to do to get the best performance from my monitor. I added the Ratheon (or similar name) 256 mb video card. Will that help?

[markonestudios]

Hi Dan. I just forked out for a new PC myself. Got a 2.6Ghz Core2Duo AMD processor, 4GB RAM, 500GB hard disk with nVidia 128MB and a TV tuner card (blah blah blah). 800USD equivalent. I opted out of the 19" monitor they were bundling with it, because I plan to get a Dell Ultrasharp 24 from the Dell Outlet instead. I've read good things about this monitor, so I think you're safe ;)

<p>By "native resolution", I believe is meant it will come in a wide-screen resolution which will cause your images to look distorted laterally (horizontally). So you need to change your screen settings, which should be pretty straightforward using Windows Control Panel. But I stand to be corrected :)

[dan_hall4]

Thanks Mark. I appreciate the input.

[garrison_k.]

"Will that help?"

 

That's a good video card, Dan. It's more than sufficient for photoshop work. Photoshop hardly needs a video card at all and any 64mb $60 card will do. Yours is capable of gaming and video so rest easy, it's over kill for photoshop that doesn't rely on frame rates or refreshing..

 

"So you need to change your screen settings"

 

yes. when moused over nothing but blue on the desktop, right click and go properties/settings and you'll see a slider for resolution. Crank it the right and rest on 1920x1200, click on apply and then okay.

 

However, I'm not sure why you went such a large hard drive. I know bigger seems better in most cases, but when it comes to OS's and hard drives, that isn't always so. When you start filling it with data, you're going to notice a performance drop because windows we be indexing all the data all the time and windows wont have a fun time with 750 gig to wonder around in.

 

I briefly, in greek, spoke on how to set up your new computer for a safe experience. In short;

 

-dell's come loaded with bloatware and spyware. The second you get it, click on "start/all programs" and you'll see a bunch of stuff you didn't order or know what the heck it is. If you "cntr-alt-dlete" and click on "Processes" you'll see about 42 to 47 programs running. This is straight out of the box and has many things running that you don't know what they are. Then go "start/run" and type in "msconfig" and then "startup". You'll see a whack of stuff that you don't need, didn't order, and will only slow you down and is intended to spy on you under the disguise of as something uselfull. The second you plug it into the internet, some of it is going to phone home.Google "dell spyware" for hours of enjoyment.

 

-to protect your self from the above and more importantly, from a disaster and losing data, most users divide their hard drive up for various tasks. This is called 'making a partition'. It acts like a fence, a wall, a border. And although it is on the same physical hard drive, they behave and look like separate drives and will have separate drive letters. We make a small partition, around 50 gig, and call it C: Because we've made this partition on the drive (put a fence up in the yard) we know have two (yards) drives (first small 50 gig yard is C: Drive) and we put windows and the software here. The next partition is D: drive and is the remainder. For instance, if we start with a 500 gig hard drive, made a partition for C Drive and is 50 gig, D Drive will hence get 450 gig. This 450 gig D Drive gets all your data and files. A good tech will set up your "Documents and Setting" to save on D Drive. But more importantly, we make a copy of C Drive when it is fresh and clean. There are several software applications out there that will let you make what is called a recovery image. In essence, we clone C Drive and put it away safe in case of disaster. However, many just like to keep re-loading this image every six months or so and get their brand new computer back with 20 mins of watching paint dry. It's easy stuff and often people are so relieved that if windows goes wonky, they can do an image install or re-load windows on the C drive, and have all thier data still remaining on D Drive.

 

Fairly good article here;

 

http://www.wikihow.com/Rebuild-a-Windows-XP-PC

 

Dan, plugging and playing on a new Dell with everything on one drive is asking for trouble. The above may seem intimidating but it isn't. It's the most common way of using a PC these days. Its a small investment in time and money for what will be years of use. Good luck.

 

G

[dan_hall4]

Garrison,

 

Thanks for all the great info. I will print it out and spend time absorbing it. The partition makes lots of sense. Thanks for the advice. I will take it.

[garrison_k.]

You're welcome, Dan.

 

If you do rebuild it, I suggest getting a smaller and faster hard drive for using as C drive. Most computer users like us, that can quickly fill up hard drives with large precious image files, usually have more than one hard drive as storage and back up. This 750 gig that is coming with your new box will be great for this.

 

There is also the issue of scratch disc for photoshop. This is where Photoshop runs out of ram and needs to temporarily write and read data to a hard drive. For best performance and safety, it is strongly recommended not to use the same physical hard drive that your OS and software is on.

 

It may seem like you've opened a can of worms and have gone way over budget, but if you do hire a tech to rebuild and re-install windows, you might want to consider, for a $100, having a second hard drive on hand before they operate. Any of the newer sata2 drives with 16 or 32 meg of cache will do.

[dan_hall4]

I will read up on external hard drives. Saw when ordering my Dell that they have a 500 gb external drive that is about $100. I need to learn more about why I need it. I thought 750 gb that is on my Dell I ordered would be enough to last me for a while. Sounds like it is common to have another hard drive. I lack insight.

[garrison_k.]

It is common to have more than one drive and in more than one place. I have back up drives in my computers that just sit there disconnected and when I wish to do a back up, I power off, connect the sata cable and power cable, boot up, drag my files over to the drive and go to bed. The next time I power off, I disconnect them. And then everything is also duplicated off site in case of fire/thieft/flood. This includes my ghost images that I spoke of earlier. With Ghost 2003, you can put the image onto identical hard ware. For whatever nasty things that can happen, I have the ability to just order the same computer and load my ghost image, plug in my hard drives, and within a day or two, back to normal. Hard drives are cheap and it takes little time and money to insure yourself these days.

 

The external hard drives just consist of a case that needs a power supply and holds a normal 3.5" hard drive. Most people buy just the case for $40.00 and then choose a hard drive. I have four of the pesky cases and use them for my off-site disaster recovery data. I have no idea what Dell is selling nor do they hardly know themselves as their stock rotates so quickly. You could order a 500gig drive one week and it'll be a WD then the next it will be seagate.

 

I use the Nexstar eSATA external cases. They come with USB and eSATA port. What's eSATA? :) Usually these cases are connected with USB2 cables. eSATA is way of putting a eSATA pci card in your computer and then your motherboard and this case are connected via a SATA cable. It's much quicker than USB2, like six times quicker. Your Dell more than likely comes with an eSATA port on the back now that they are so common.

 

The 750 should last you awhile. Depends on shooting rates. A little bit of advice, try to buy your drives in the same denominations of 250gig. So, 250 gig, 500 gig, 750 gig, and 1tb. The dumbest thing I did, well they were a common size at one point, but started out with 120's, then 250's then 320's and 750's...It becomes a pain to simple just drag full hard drives over to another when they're different sizes and have spent many hours doing the shuffle.

 

Down the rabbit hole.... :)

[dan_hall4]

Garrison,

 

Thank you for taking the time to explain that. I will look into getting an external hard drive and backing up all my images there. I can clearly see the benefit in doing so. Thanks for making me more familiar with the process and equipment needed.

 

Dan

[garrison_k.]

no worries, Dan. Just paying it forward and giving back to all those that altruistically helped me along the way in various communties across the net.

 

Cheers,

G.