Desktop PC recommendations

[theskull1]

Thinking of getting myself a new Desktop PC

Can anybody with a bit of knowledge of the market/technology recommend a good medium spec platform

Must have
Good video capability (output to tv when required)
Good audio capability (decent audio outs to an amp)

Apart from that I'm not fussy...I think

[ziggysego]

[theskull1]

Thats what I have at the minute ziggy

[Double Cross]

I recently bought on of these. Its a HP TouchSmart IQ770. It has everything you are looking for and more and if you shop around you can get a pretty good deal.

[Gnevin]

Buy a PC for about 450 and an Xbox for about 200 and stream that way with far better results/

[take_yer_points]

I've been streaming Saturday afternoon soccer to the laptop from www.myp2p.eu (free soccer matches for anyone who's interested). The quality's pretty good but not as good as I would like - you can make out everything that's happening without a problem and you can make out the players no problem but when the camera zooms out or the ball goes to the far side of the pitch it can be harder to make out.

If I was streaming this onto a desktop with a very good graphics card would this improve the quality? Or is the problem the quality of the streaming? I know its hard to tell without actually seeing what I see when I'm streaming it but in general will the quality of the graphics card improve the quality of the picture when streaming? I want to check this out before investing in a PC with top quality graphics.

[theskull1]

No it won't improve typ. The image resolution will have been reduced and then the image compressed quite heavily to get the streaming bit rate to a level that allow it to streamed properly on the www.

[J70]

Setanta's broadband streaming isn't the best at the high 600 kb/sec setting - its very stop-start, at least using the cable broadband connection I have in NY. The 300 kb/sec stream obviously doesn't give you the same detail, but it comes through in a good steady stream, with none of the buffering pauses and a decent picture. The Myp2p streams vary a lot in quality in my experience - one day Sopcast is great, another day its shite and you'll get a better stream using PPMate or PPLive.

PC World, an American computer consumer magazine, does good side-by-side reviews of various classes of all kinds of computer stuff on their website. Search around it for some ideas (I presume the likes of Dell and HP will be selling the same setups on both sides of the Atlantic?).

Here's a review of some "best bargain" PCs...

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,142742-page,2-c,desktoppcs/article.html

I'd also take a look at websites like CNet.

[take_yer_points]

No it won't improve typ. The image resolution will have been reduced and then the image compressed quite heavily to get the streaming bit rate to a level that allow it to streamed properly on the www.

Cheers Skull!! Saves me a few quid then that I can't afford anyway!

[lynchbhoy]

imo think most desktops are a 'safe bet' these days
you dont get too many bad ones, ok there are some cheap 'DIY' models that people put together and sell under some makey up brandname of their own
but unless you are looking for a specific machine to go intense gaming or graphics utilisation etc
then as long as you get 2GB mem as a minimum, you shoul be able to take the latest spec offered and get a v good Pc.

Laptops are still a bit different to this, but manufacturers have personal PC's/desktops all sorted out now.

wouldnt go for the cheapest (and I have a personal pref for intel chip) but certainly wouldnt go too far off the bottom rung if its home accounts, documentation, internet surfing you want.

I still buy Dell desktops.

[nifan]

Ive been a long time AMD advocate, but id agree with you of late lynchboy - intel wipes the floor with AMD this last couple of years

[rashCharacter]

your talking nonsense lads, if your looking for something for video and sound then you need an iMac.  Its the future...  Puts an PC bollocks to shame

http://store.apple.com/Apple/WebObjects/ukstore.woa/wa/RSLID?nnmm=browse&mco=7B72369E&node=home/shop_mac/family/imac

[lynchbhoy]

Ive been a long time AMD advocate, but id agree with you of late lynchboy - intel wipes the floor with AMD this last couple of years

dont like amd for years - but was mostly because they had chips cause fires in PC's.

also for some reason I categorise amd in with novell, mac's, unix etc
..the 'incompatibles' of the IT world  

[lynchbhoy]

your talking nonsense lads, if your looking for something for video and sound then you need an iMac.  Its the future...  Puts an PC bollocks to shame

http://store.apple.com/Apple/WebObjects/ukstore.woa/wa/RSLID?nnmm=browse&mco=7B72369E&node=home/shop_mac/family/imac

undoubtedly
mac stuff is great
but if you need to comunicate/read/send documentation to anyone in the business world, then mac's were and are still incompatible and thats the way
things will stay, no matter how much better the actual machine is over intel / windows OS based pc's

its like the old video war
betamax was supposed to be the far superior system

but VHS won out due to its popularity.

[Main Street]

The iMacs have a good screen but now lag well behind with their computer specifications compared to the models on offer with Dell.

Lynchboy
I don't experience compatibility issues with Word, Excel or Adobe documents between Mac and Windows.