The best replacement for Dave's desktop computer would be

A Mac
0% (0 votes)
Home-brew (Windows)
88% (7 votes)
Home-brew (Linux)
0% (0 votes)
Some from Dell, Toshiba, Compaq, HP, or other
13% (1 vote)
Total votes: 8

Comments

Hmn... so how about Win XP versus Vista?

Having been using Vista for nearly 2 months at work, I find it painful to be going back to XP at times. Vista is far from perfect, but it has a new kernel and much better support for a lot of the newer hardware, particularly if you're exploring multi-core systems (especially > 2 cores). That being said, quad-core systems are a little over-the-top. With most convertional setups, it would be nearly impossible to max the CPU out - the hard-drive or the video card is much more likely to be the bottleneck than the CPU. That being said, there's a strange pull to get a quad-core just for the sake of having one.

How much RAM usage? If I buy a new system I'm thinking of a minimum of 2 gigs of RAM - maybe I'll splurge and go for 4 gigs.

Isn't 2 Gigs just about a minimum if you want to run Vista and actually have something left over for your other programs?

I'm not crazy...oh, wait, nevermind.

I've got 1 Gig in my machine at work and it runs ok. If I were buying my own, I would go with 2 Gigs.

2GB is recommended for running Vista.

My current computer is powerful enough for Vista, but I haven't switched yet for a few reasons:

  1. Microsoft sent us the business edition, but I'm not sure I want to run that on my computer. I was initially leaning towards Ultimate, but I wouldn't use a lot of the features so it's probably not worth the extra cost.
  2. A lot of people are saying to wait until Service Pack 1.
  3. Doing an in-place upgrade nullifies your XP license key so you can't go back if you change yoru mind or transfer it to another machine. I just recently reformatted my hard drive and I'd rather not do it again now.

I'm in the process of building a media center machine, and it's going to run Windows XP Media Center Edition instead of Vista too. I'm trying to keep the costs down on this box by using most of the components from my previous computer (Athlon64 3200+). I already have a license for Windows XP Media Center Edition that hasn't been used yet.

It also depends which version of Vista you're running. If you're running Home Basic, you'll do just fine with a 1GB. However, if you're running Ultimate, chances are you'll want at least 2GB, possibly more.