Hi,
Good advice and experiences so far - no need to go into that so much, but like anything there's much more than meet's the eye.
From experience within the industry as well as personal home computing and business requirements and needs -it's the 'ongoing' aspects you may want to spend some time looking into.
It's all fine saying 'depends what you want it for' for this moment in time, but will it be suitable if your needs change in the future? - invariably, most 'home' users won't need massive new application needs over time but the usual requirement for buying a PC applies here - buy the best system you can afford to ensure some future expansion capability.
The new MAC operating system comes out in just over a week's time - it too, has been delayed for launch since Apple wanted to get the iphone out first, and initial reports I've seen about what it'll do are encouraging - I really like the fact the Apple OS is one for all, all the features and a home licence for upto 3 or 5 (i cant remember) is around £130. That blows Vista right out of the water - perfect for the future when you may need a second machine.
In another thread, I've just purchased my 4th Dell. I still have my first one from 1998 looking like it exploded, wires and circuit boards cracks dents and all - and it still works! my last dell im selling off. I've tried lots of other machines, IBM/Lenovo's, Sony, HP, Compaq's etc and whilst some of those have really excellent certain machines, I still benchmark them for price against Dell's. I do have another compaq latop here that bruised and battle damaged and still runs strong - the key here is to try out machines for feel and use - I hate Toshiba's with their tiny little spacebar and usually normal height enter key for instance.
Technically, laptops nowadays are MUCH closer to top end desktop specs and performance is often better - admittedly, to get that you need to look at the higher end of price ranges.
To help you along, nip into WHSmith's and pickup a couple PC magazines with reviews on machines and Apple magazines with reviews and compare. Look at expamples of use that probably wont ever need - it'll indicate who does what best and help narrow your choice.
Also, it is possible to get Vista, and then effectively 'downgrade' to XP - but it gets a litle fiddly for non techy types (for instance it's much easier to have XP on first and then install Vista on a separate partition than the other way round) there are solutions, my new laptop I just simply purchased another second hand hard drive, bought a spare carrier specifically for it, and now I just remove it and leave it at my business address overnight - it has XP on it. When I get home, I slot in the original hard drive the laptop came with and that has Vista ultimate on it.
Seems all confusing but I suggest you read up, evaluate what you'd like want, narrow down hardware selections based on yorur criteria and then purchase.
if you know exactly what you want, and it does turn out to be a Dell and a laptop, thenI just saved about £900 off this laptop 4 weeks ago when I bought it. On the Dell site it came to around £2430 ish (Dell XPS 1710) and I picked it up for £1525 delivered. It's an ebay power seller with retail premises and a landline and I've been extremely happy with it. There are similar guys doing Dell desktops too and they're new and NOT refurbs or dell outlet machines. Let me know if you want the details.
else, look at ebuyer, and dabs for good pricing, ebuyer are doing a laptop Samsung R20 thats listed as a bargain and A listed in the current PC Pro magazine at £499 inc VAT - for just £399 inc vat! £100 off just by looking around!
There's more that could be said, but it'll take up all the space on this posting and yer'd fall asleep! so i'll shutup!
Hope this helps
DtM! West London & Slough UK!
