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I will shortly be joining the human race when i buy my first PC. Being a cheapskate, i am considering one of the budget models from DELL. These contain Celeron D CPU's and i was wondering if they are good enough for my requirements which are basic home use(ie photo's etc), internet and the odd game such as flight sims/ Splinter Cell/ medal of honour... that sort of thing?
Any help will be much appreciated. (not jargon literate yet!)
Topper

All the Dell PCs I've seen have been fine. In fact we've just bought one for our workshop.

Dell have also come up with some of the best deals I've seen of late.

If you are working with graphics then you may want to go for a model with a bit more ram and hard-disc space.

For gaming you may want a higher spec graphics card - but I can't help there as I don't know what the current games are using. (Last game I played was Doom2 about 10 years ago!)

The PC I'm using now is 4 years old and is still more than adequate for my needs.

Personally I would go for one with the full Pentium 4 proccessor as the Celerons are slow due to their lack on die memory (Is a Celeron just a Pentium with only a bit of the memory working ?). A goodly amount of memory (1Gb) will keep things trucking along. A seperate graphics card is a must if you want to play any recent games. Look for a PCI Express card with a minimum of 128 Mb of ram. Should be able to spec one of the Dell 5150's for somewhere around £500 - £600. Hope this is of some help.

Dell's advertised special offfer models are tremendous value. However I've heard that when you get on the phone to them and start discussing maybe getting a bit more memory or a faster processor the price gets ratcheted up because it becomes a "special" build, no longer one of the offer machines. So maybe get them to email a spec and price and compare and consider it off the phone.

Marc

Use Dell's web page - you can upgrade one of their Pc's fom the order page and see how this effects on the price, as you go. Simple.
If you can afford to hang on, sign up to the mailiing list and they will email you their current offers - offers change all the time.
Yep, you've guessed it, this is how I bought my current PC.
You can buy the drivers at an additional cost but you don't get a disc with the operating system on it. There's a recovery program installed on the PC - make sure that you make all of the relevant recovery disc copies!!

Cheers
Mark

As I recall - their best offers are not necessarily on their home-page.

Often their adverts in magazines will have promo codes which you need to enter into their website in order to get the best deal.

Hmm, yes, Dell.. you have to use a mixture of their press promo's and their emailings to make some sort of decision. There's a game to be played - play it, and you'll get a deal.

Live long and prosper.

Cheers
Mark

Topper,
I bought a Dell 8100 series PC two years ago and am very satisfied with it. As mentioned by others, I faxed them my spec. after going through their on line catalogue and received my PC two weeks later.

Like with everything else, you get what you pay for. Yeah, you can plod through reams of deals etc., but does a guy about to buy his first PC really know what he wants? Probably not, eh Topper? There’s something to be said for looking in the local newspaper and picking up a used PC. £ 100 will usually get you a complete system. Then, have a play to find out what you really need … then, when you are ready, go out and get the most expensive new system you can afford (ie, with as much RAM as you can afford)! But always keep your old one (as a back-up). I still use an old Pentium (1) clunker from ten years ago (and use the classic 1986 version of Lotus 123 every day). Just go for it, Mate.

Please help!
My PC (Dell Dimension 3100) is knackered. Having never had a problem in the 2 years since i bought it, last night after an automatic update (windows XP service pack 3), i selected the restart computer now option, it duly closed down then restarted, the XP screen was displayed and the scrolling blue line was evident until the 3rd pass when it stopped and the screen went blank, after 15 minutes of nothing i was forced to switch off the mains. When i tried again i got the blue warning screen with what look like several error codes at the bottom of the page. Have tried all the options in setup (last known good config, safe mode, safe mode with promp, etc) to no avail.
Any help or advice would be desperately appreciated.
Topper