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Shazzie
50 pts.
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Q:
Advice on buying new PC
Hardware, Microsoft Access, Pentium, Hardware configuration management, Microsoft Excel, CorelDRAW
I have a Pentium 4 & need to upgrade. I teach Microsoft, use graphics in my manuals, & use CorelDraw a lot. I also design huge Excel spreadsheets with lots of formulas and design databases in Access - what would be a good PC processor, ram, etc? I have been quoted on a system with a Quadcor processor, 250 GB Hard Drive and 2 GB RAM - is that too much or is that what I need?
ASKED: Nov 5 2008  1:50 PM GMT
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Flame
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First comments:

None of the applications you mentioned seems to be very CPU intensive, so I think the quadcore would be good, but not really necessary. It will depend on budget constraints. If you can afford it, then go ahead.
About RAM, if you are going to have Win Vista as OS, you should definitely add more RAM, but even if you are not going to use Vista, I think more RAM would be really good, taking into consideration that RAM is cheaper these days.
I think 250 GB disk is ok.
You should also look for a good video card.

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I agree with the above answer, I'd use the the additional money a quad core CPU would cost for a better video card. While a 250 Gig HD will fill the bill, you can get a much larger drive for only a little more money. If you are working with large speadsheets or graphic applications like Corel Draw you might want to consider either a larg monitor, or use two (or more) smaller monitors. Most add on video cards will usually support two monitors. More memory is always nice, especially with Vista.
Good Luck!
-Flame
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Last Answered: Nov 6 2008  6:10 PM GMT by Flame   14495 pts.
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Pressler2904   2165 pts.  |   Nov 6 2008  10:02PM GMT

All good answers - I agree that a quad core my be a bit of overkill…

Make sure you have some sort of BACKUP solution in place, whether it’s dual hard drives set to RAID 1 or and external inexpensive tape or disk drive: whatever fits your budget. Believe me, having to restore a failed drive and attempt recover of lost files can get to be a rather expensive proposition rather quickly: I have been involved in situations where recovery of about 160GB of data took well over 20 hours to complete… And most data recovery specialists charge by the MB or hour….

 

Shazzie   50 pts.  |   Nov 8 2008  10:19AM GMT

Many thanks to all for the advice - much appreciated. Will see if I can add more RAM but I don’t think I will be going for the Quadcor Extreme - just a normal quadcor should do the job.

 
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