buying PC advice

It's huge. I'm 5'11" and they come up about 10" short of my waist.

It's nice a roomy, classic case some people might say.

The computer in the link is fine, it's top of the line, which I don't think you quiet need.

If you rarely play games you do not need a Radeon 9800 Pro. Hell, a geforce3 or Radeon 9000 would do you great.

I don't know about the 6.1 sound system either... I don't know whether you'll need it or not.

I would also strongly suggest WinXP PRO. For work, it's sooo much better. Plus it's only a $60 difference, you can actually save if you lose the 9800 and the 6.1 sound.

The monitor is good, however from personal experience the best monitors that I have ever used were Trinitrons. Any size. I would prefer a Trinitron tube over anything else. Although I'm completely sure that the E90F is non-trinitron.

The other stuff is good.

Yeah, dont buy XP Home! first off, its a pain to run iis on --> here is a list of instructions to do it:

http://www.15seconds.com/issue/020118.htm

and as a developer OS its a bad choice. For a web surfer/ MS Office user its just fine.

I had XP pro selected, that is what I use now ;)
I must have forgot to re-choose it when I gave the first bad link and went back to re-calculate....

(phew - wipes sweat....)

the box we got from them was a couple years ago so it was just a regular tower case, not sure how big this one would be. judging from the size of the monitor next to it i'd say its an average size tho

everything looks pretty good on your box as far as specs, i'd prob replace the hd with a western digital special edition drive tho. they're a bit cheaper and really freakin' fast.

chris

Well... I have had 3 Dell's and I'm pleased with all of them. They don't crash or have terrible problems like other PC's out on the market. There support is good, too.

I also like Micron's PCs. The one that I have has been running rock-solid for about 6-7 years every day. And nothing has gone wrong with it that I can remember. It's still using Windows 95 and has a 4 GB hard drive if that says to anyone how old it is.

So overall, I say go for a Dell or Micron system.

Hm...I guess my Micron simply didn't like me, 'cause it sounds like everyone else has had good experiences with Micron. But I'm with a Dell now, and it works great, so I'll go with them .

I checked out Dell and their latest power PC (the gaming one) is about 4k. The alienware was cheaper than that.

yeah, if you're going for a good gaming comp Dell probably isn't the place for you. They're more of a general use computer in my eyes, for the common guy that just wants an up to date comp. for cheap. I don't really do a lot of gaming myself, so I don't really know what the best buy is. I get PC Gamer magazine and PC World, so I get some reviews. PC Gamer likes AlienWare's stuff I think, I don't have the mags with me now, so I don't know their latest reviews.

Well I never game on the PC. My line of thinking a kick ass gaming PC would be perfect for graphic design work.