What's a good computer..

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lillizzierae

New Member
Hey. I'm planning on buying a desktop computer in the next couple weeks and honestly I have no idea what I want to get.

So, I'm a web designer. I run a bunch of programs at one time and need a decent amount of hard drive space. I want speed on the new comp. I was considering an iMac but I'm being told it's not that great of a computer for the price. As if I could get a way better desktop for $1,300 iMac and that you're really just buying the name. I would like something under 1300. I don't care if it's a apple or pc. Though I was told, "If you're a web designer you should probably get an apple." But I don't see the reason why. I'd really like to have a nice monitor.

Does anyone have any ideas for me on computer or what I should look for? I'd appreciate them.

Liz
 
Drenlin

Drenlin

Active Member
Whoever told you that was right...iMac's aren't worth it. They do have good monitors, but the super-high resolution ones (27") start at $1700 with crappy specs....not worth it IMO. You could build your own for that. The smaller ones run at 1920x1080, standard for a good monitor.

Are you willing to but one together yourself, or would you rather buy one from somewhere?

Also, what programs do you use?
 
mojo42

mojo42

New Member
Would you want to build one? you could get a lot more performance/usability for the price. and spend the extra money on a nicer monitor.
 
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lillizzierae

New Member
Yeah, the 27" iMac is friggin' ridiculous in price!!

I've always heard it's good to build one because you really do get more for what you're paying. But i don't even know the first thing about building one! So I probably would end up just buying one.
 
mojo42

mojo42

New Member
gateway has always done me well. and a sony vaio has nice screens and good performance too.
 
Drenlin

Drenlin

Active Member
lillizzierae said:
Yeah, the 27" iMac is friggin' ridiculous in price!!

I've always heard it's good to build one because you really do get more for what you're paying. But i don't even know the first thing about building one! So I probably would end up just buying one.
Click to expand...

It really isn't hard. It's like putting Legos together, lol. I understand if you don't want to though...most people are a bit wary of it.

So do you do anything especially resource-intensive? Anything that takes a while to compute, like encoding and whatnot? I don't imagine designing web pages takes a lot, but it never hurts to ask.
 
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lillizzierae

New Member
Like putting legos together? haha. If only it was that easy *sigh* :)

I don't really do anything major on the computer. Yeah, web design really isn't anything crazy. However, I do some 3D work and right now my video card is.. crap. My main thing is I usually have a lot of programs running at once.. Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, Firefox, IE, iTunes, etc etc because I have to switch back and forth from program to program and HATE waiting for things to load. Another thing is I want a nice display too but I'm sure I'll be paying out the butt for that. lol

There's just so many computers out that it's a pain to pick one.

I did check out the HP that Mojo suggested.. It wasn't bad I liked it. It does blow that a monitor isn't included but that is the type of computer that I would be interested in.
 
Drenlin

Drenlin

Active Member
That's what I was after. Photoshop is actually very CPU intensive, but you can use a newer graphics card to speed up the process considerably. (GPGPU) I'm not sure if Illustrator supports it, but it's an Adobe product, so it should.

This would be a good choice:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883113120

As well as this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824236047

You could actually get a way with a less powerful computer, but this one will stay useful for quite a while.

Btw, the Legos analogy was actually fairly accurate. You obviously have to be gentle with some components, but it really is a simple thing to do. It's fairly obvious where everything goes. You should look up some youtube videos on it :)
 
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