I have not build or purchased a computer in a long while and know that many things have changed…processors, SATA, ram speeds, etc…
The last 2 computer I have purchased have been laptops, and have worked fine for me, and my last work laptop was awesome…I will be moving back to the USA and when i return I plan to break my ass and work at home, thinking it will be time to buy a slick new machine that I can leave on, is quiet and reliable. My other cares are the ability to run dual minitors and to login remotely.
The two choices I thought of were go with a bad ass IBM laptop, with a docking station and two external monitors. The upside to this solution is that it would also be portable, the downside is the massive cost involved as well as the lack of power that a desktop can provide.
The second choice was to build a Dell PC and I think this is what I will go with. I am looking at the optiplex GX620 series, with a dual core processor, 2 gig of ram and a PCIe 256MB ATI Radeon X600, Dual Monitor DVI or VGA, full height video card…whooo. Now that stuff is a pretty easy decision but what I am really confused on are the variety of hardrives available.
Dell offers both a 80gb SATA 7200rpm drive and a 80gb SATA 10,000 RPM drive… I have read that the 7200rpm sata drives are consumer grade and have the tendincy to break down…and I hear the the 10,000 rpm drives are the closest thing to a SCSI drive, which is a professional grade work horse. Is there any truth to this? Has anyone tried either? I thought of getting a 80gig 10,000 for the boot drive and an 160gig 7200 for file storage, I have had terrible luck with hard drives and currently back things up to both DVD and to an external 120gb 7200 harddrive that only is used to back up or restore.
Since this is my business machine, I am thinking the dell would be a good choice because they have stanard on site repair, within 24 hrs, which would be pretty nice if the thing breaks, which they always do. Does anyone have any horror stories with dell or any recomendation as to another place to get a quiet, reliable workhorse machine that can support dual monitors and have onsite support?
I can get into the dell with 2 19″ lcds for around 2100 taxes included. The IBM laptop would be around 1800 with out monitors….
I would love to hear what you are using, what you paid, where you got it, and any problems or comments you could provide. Cutts if you read this let me know what you ending up getting.
Thank you!!
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Do yourself a favor and make the switch to Apple 😉
When’s the move?
I love the dell I purchased. It is super quite and the dual 19″ monitors is heaven. Also, the beast is fast as all heck! I have nto put a seceond HD in it yet, but I will probably do that after school is out and I have time to mess around with stuff.
I have thought about an apple, but cannot justify it…one day I will get one for playing around, but I am not ready to make the jump.
THe move will be near the end of March. Around the 20th-25th.
James, what are your thoughts on the 10,000 rpm vs the 7200 rpm drive?
The 10,000RPM hard drive will be a ’74GB Western Digital Raptor’.
Having just this week bought one, I’m not too sure you’ll benefit, it depends what you plan on using the PC for… ?
Raptors are fast in terms of read/write speed, which is why gamers and image/video editing enthusiasts use them – if you’re a casual net surfer / MS Word user, there won’t be any gain.
As for durability, Raptors have a tendancy to break sooner than a standard 7,200RPM drive as a result of faster moving parts.
Hope I’ve helped!
Tony, I am a hardcore web user and multi-tasker. I do lots of work in excel, and some in photoshop.
I was hoping it would increase my overall system performance but it sounds like I may be better off going from 2g of RAM to 3gig instead of the extra $110 on the hard drive.
Also if I had to guess the 10k RPM would be louder then a 7200RPM?
Thanks for your feedback!