[momfor5]

I'm Thinking about buying a new computer and was wanting to know what to look for. I need it for the family pc and also a small bussiness. I look at a dell and not sure what to get. I have a older pc right now it has a 10 gig hard drive and is 400 or 450 mhz and is windows ME. I would like it to be faster and more memory. Any thing you can tell me would help. My price range is between 300 and 500.
Thanks, Wanda

[Advertisements]

Hi Wanda,

Please tell me what software you plan on using / currently use and what you want to do with the PC.

If you just want to browse the internet / world wide web, check email, and use word processing, then you may want to consider purchasing a PC running the Linspire Linux operating system instead of Microsoft Windows XP.

If you need to run particular software that is only available for Windows, then I recommend a PC with these minimum specs:

* Windows XP Home
* 1.8 Gigahertz (Ghz) Processor (Intel Pentium 4 or Celeron or AMD Athlon or Duron/Sempron)
* 256M RAM ( remember more is better)
* 40G Hard drive (most people typically use 10G of space and you will be hard pressed to find a modern PC with a hard drive size under 80G)

Everything else you will need to some degree will be included with the PC. If you have broadband internet service, you will want to make sure your firewall is enabled before putting your new computer online and you will also want to make sure that you have current antivirus software ( which you will usually have to purchase separately for $30-50).

Hope this helps,

fellowplanetdweller

[fellowplanetdweller]

Hi Wanda,

Please tell me what software you plan on using / currently use and what you want to do with the PC.

If you just want to browse the internet / world wide web, check email, and use word processing, then you may want to consider purchasing a PC running the Linspire Linux operating system instead of Microsoft Windows XP.

If you need to run particular software that is only available for Windows, then I recommend a PC with these minimum specs:

* Windows XP Home
* 1.8 Gigahertz (Ghz) Processor (Intel Pentium 4 or Celeron or AMD Athlon or Duron/Sempron)
* 256M RAM ( remember more is better)
* 40G Hard drive (most people typically use 10G of space and you will be hard pressed to find a modern PC with a hard drive size under 80G)

Everything else you will need to some degree will be included with the PC. If you have broadband internet service, you will want to make sure your firewall is enabled before putting your new computer online and you will also want to make sure that you have current antivirus software ( which you will usually have to purchase separately for $30-50).

Hope this helps,

fellowplanetdweller

[momfor5]

I would like to have more office software on it. I do have printmaster also I like to do alot with pictures so I may Be putting photo shop on it to. My son will put a few games on it too. I hope this is the info you wanted. Thanks wanda

[fellowplanetdweller]

Hello again Wanda,

Looks like you will need to run Windows XP because of the software you want to use. The specifications I outlined in my original post should work for you just fine.

FYI: A good, free alternative to the $300 Microsoft Office 2003 suite ( Word, Excel, etc. ) is called OpenOffice.org and can be downloaded from www.openoffice.org website.

If you have any other questions, feel free to ask,

fellowplanetdweller