Help - 1st PC for general use & digital photos

[mccrackenj]

I badly need your advice.
I've now decided to enter the 21st century and get into digital photography, which also gives me another reason to finally get a PC at home.

I will use it for the usual stuff ie: word-pro, spreadsheets, e-mail & internet, but also want to be able to download photos from a digital SLR and manipulate them. I'm not interested in altering the actual images, just storing them, e-mailing them and putting onto DVD (is that difficult?). Also - I've no interest whatsoever in gaming or downloading music or playing DVDs etc on it.

I'm a complete computer numpty (use 1 all day, every day for years but I haven't a clue what's 'under the bonnet' - the nice people in IT give me a new one every few years and I'm happy) so I need advice on what size memory I'll need, what software etc. Also I don't need a notebook jobbie.

For example: Dell have a Dimension 5150 with

Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor 630 with HT Technology (3.00 GHz, 2MB L2 cache, 800MHz FSB)
Windows® XP Home Edition
Windows Media Centre Software
512MB DDR RAM
15" Analogue Flat Panel Monitor (15.0" v.i.s)
80GB Hard Drive (7200 RPM)

for £489

Is that any use for me? What other software will I need? What else would you recommend as well / instead?

Sorry for the long post, grateful for any advice you might have

Cheers

John

(PS: I've also posted on the computers & stuff forum)

[pdV6]

Any bog standard PC should do you proud. If you're talking a lot of pictures, then a large, fast hard disk will be an advantage.

[ehasler]

Personally, I'd go for a bit more memory (at least 1GB of RAM), and a bigger hard disk as 80GB is pretty small if you're storing lots of photos.

I'd also add a DVD writer to the list too, as you'll want to make backups of your images too just in case you lose data on your PC, and a DVD holds much more data than a CD.

An external portable hard drive is another good way to backup your files (you can never have too many backups!), but you might need to buy one from elsewhere as I don't think Dell sell these.

[jimothy]

Mac Mini.

The sopftware that comes with it is the best photo importing/organising software you can get IMHO. It can do all the emailing/putting onto DVD/slideshow stuff you'd ever need.

Also, being a mac it'll be very, very easy to use.

They don't come with a keyboard/mouse/monitor (the idea being you re-use what you've got, or buy new if required) and start from about £350. Make sure you get one with a superdrive if you want to burn DVD's. And get as much hard disk space as possible - but don't forget you can get external USB2 drive for next to nothing these days.

[ehasler]

Another thing - if you can stretch to it, a bigger monitor (19" ) would be a useful investment - the Dell 19" Ultrasharp is very nice.

>> Edited by ehasler on Tuesday 24th January 10:54

[mccrackenj]

Thanks everyone for your advice so far, very useful. The choice of specs on the Dell site included the following CD / DVD drives:

48X/32X DVD/CDRW Combo Drive + DVD 5.1 Power Software + Sonic DigitalMedia v.7 [Included in Price]

16 X DVD +/- RW + DVD 5.1 Power Software + Sonic Software for DVD/RW+R [add £58.75 or £1/month1]

48X CD ROM + 48-32X CD-RW IDE + Sonic DigitalMedia v.7 [add £11.75]

16X IDE DVD ROM + DVD 5.1 Power Software + 48-32X CD-RW IDE + Sonic DigitalMedia v.7 [add £29.38]

48X CD ROM + 16 X DVD +/- RW + DVD 5.1 Power Software + Sonic Software for DVD/RW+R [add £70.50 or £1/month1]

16X IDE DVD ROM + 16 X DVD +/- RW + DVD 5.1 Power Software + Sonic Software for DVD/RW+R [add £88.13 or £2/month1]

As I said, I'm a numpty in this field so I've no idea what the difference is between these. All I want to be able to do is store my pics on a DVD so that I can bung it into my DVD recorder and watch the pics on TV - is that possible easily or am I missing the point and talking out of my ar$e?

Thanks again everyone.

[ErnestM]

If you can stretch your budget a bit more I would go for 1gb ram and possibly a GeForce based video solution (Dell do some based on the 6800 GPU IIRC).

If you find even more coins down the back of your sofa, I would stretch for a dual core processor as well (Pentium-D) and go with XP Pro instead of Home.

ErnestM

[simpo two]

Well, if you want to write DVDs I'm fairly sure you'll need to spec a DVD writer

I have a 5-year old Athlon AMD 1800+ with 512 Mb RAM and it runs PhotoShop CS fine (though CS2 is noticeably slower). My next upgrade will be a USB2 card to speed file transfers from camera to PC - under £10.

If you can stretch to it, consider two screens (and get a GFX card that has two outputs). It makes life MUCH easier if you can have your folder of pix and toolbars on one screen, and the image you're working on on the other.

80Gb HD should last a while but if it gets tight you can always buy another and fit it when you need it. I started with a 40Gb and added an 80Gb later, so 'C' is now System and 'D' is Data.

[RobDickinson]

Just about any PC willdo internet, word processing and image cattalouging with lite editing.

I concure with larger hard drive, some dvd driter and a 19" monitor, 1GB mem prob better too.

[mccrackenj]

Thanks for all the replies everyone.

Thanks to you guys and those on the 'computers & stuff' forum I think I now have a decent idea of what I need. I'm going to 'build' a PC on the Dell website and also call into my nearest PC world to have a look at Macs, then I'll get me credit card out.

Now, a Nikon D70s or a Canon. . . ?

NO! NO - don't start another thread, I have 2 Nikon 35mm SLRs and a couple of lenses, so that question's already decided.