Hopefully this computer is a decent choice

[jbear]

Well...I settled on an HP N8120M. Its not state of the art, but its faster than what I had and in my price range.
Intel Core2 Quad 2.4GHz Q6600
3GB Ram
2x320 HD's
NVIDIA GeForce 7350 LE graphics card with TurboCache, 128MB
Vista Home Prem (I'm only putting my scanner and printer on it, so I don't see compat. issues as the 2400 and CS 5000 have Vista downloads).
Wireless
DVD/CD
Lots of ports and not much room to add (but I don't see wanting to),
and a bunch of other junk I don't need.
It was a cert. refurb. at Newegg.
I don't know if it was the best possible choice, but at $650...it looked like a good deal to me.
Feel free to tell me if you think its crap or that it looks good...compared to my no-core/1GBRam/80GBHD piece of yuck..it looks like a diamond...XP or not.

 

[Hemigod]

Those specs look great too me!! That should be a fast system for doing whatever you want.

 

[jbear]

I'm hopin'
It has 2 x 320 HD's that spin up at 7200...I think if I put the scratch disc on a separate drive that alone will help. My current system has one 80gb HD and is maxed out at 1 GB of RAM...I use it only to print after PP on my laptop...a real pain.
I know this isn't the professionals dream system, but to be honest...I do postprocessing because I have to...not because I like it.

 

[1MoreFord]

jbear, The machine you're looking at has similar specs to my latest and I'm very pleased with mine. Take a look at how it runs photoshop with one HD.
https://www.nikoncafe.com/vforums/showthread.php?t=91981&page=16

 

[mallaig]

jbear, looks good, especially for that price tag.

The only thing I would swap (if they let you) is the video card. Turbo cache uses part of your system memory as video memory. I'd replace the card with one that has dedicated video memory on board, such as this.

Hope it helps.

 

[jbear]

Thanks...I'll keep it in mind. I suspect (with my very limited knowledge) that this will be so much faster than what I have that it won't matter (especially with the scratch disc on a separate physical drive). But if it does...