My New PC Spec

by cameron | Mar 16, 2007 | Melbourne, technology | 7 comments

Jodie asked me to post up the spec of my new PC (which hasn’t arrived yet).

It’s basically a Lenovo A55 with the Core 2 Duo E6300 1.8 GHz processor, 1 GB DDR2 RAM (not sure this is going to be enough but I’ll buy another stick later if it needs it). Comes with a 250GB drive and I’ve got another TB of external drives that I’ll slam into it from the old machine. Here’s a link to the machine on Lenovo’s site.

It comes pre-loaded with Vista which I’m nervous about for a variety of reasons:

I’ve heard mixed reports from friends about Vista’s performance. I don’t buy into the “it’s not secure” arguments – which I even got from my dealer – people have been saying that about Windows for years and it’s just nonsense. My house isn’t secure if I don’t lock the door either. If I let complete masked strangers into my house I’m just looking for trouble. But I am worried about performance. I’ve been running Office 2007 for the last few weeks and it’s pretty but slow. So we’ll see what happens. If it sucks, I’ll degrade it down to XP.

I’m a little worried about how my apps will run on it – mostly my production apps – Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe Audition and Skylook. They all apparently are Vista compliant but the Adobe stuff has “minor known issues”. Messing around with a new config, on a production machine, is always a worry. Most other apps I rely upon are now web2.0 and OS-proof.

I’m also worried about getting Vista drivers for my external Waveterminal U24 soundcard. It’s a about five years old and even the XP drivers for it were flaky. Might have to buy a new one of those as well.

My key hope for the machine is that it will be QUIET. For the last few years I’ve had to turn my desktop off when I record and work on the laptop because the desktop sounded like a Boeing. The idea is that this one will be quieter because of the dual core processor and it’s got multiple smaller fans in it rather than a couple of the huge ones. Fingers crossed this does the trick.

I was originally going to get the smaller Lenovo desktop unit but it doesn’t have many expansion slots and when you’re doing a lot of audio and video editing, you never know what cards you might need. The integrated audio and video on the mobo usually aren’t enough for high-end processing.

By the way, my ‘dealer’ is my next-door neighbour David Jackson who has a company called Bespoke Solutions (soon to be re-branded Hexworks). If anyone in Melbourne is looking for a boutique IT solutions company, I can highly recommend David’s services. He’s a Christian but I can overlook that.

7 Comments

Phillip Molly Malone on March 16, 2007 at 11:58 am

From all reports 2GB of memory min and probably more like 4gb. From memory something about how it does caching. I need to hold off financially to mid year anyway, but I am hoping they Dell at least have the option for Readdrive.
Molly
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Daniel on March 16, 2007 at 12:14 pm

Agree with Molly. I think you’re nuts for even contemplating running Premiere on Vista with only 1Gb of RAM. (I consider 1Gb the minimum for XP, and you know Vista’s going to need more.)

As for “quiet”, that might be something you should have asked for specifically, given its importance for your particular use. There’s a lot of tech now that you can get to make PCs really quiet, but who knows if it would be built-in to the model you’re getting.
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Cameron Reilly on March 16, 2007 at 1:24 pm

2GB even with the superpowered Dual Core? You think?
I did specify “quiet” to my dealer. In fact, I said I needed Blue Thunder “whisper mode”.
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Tony on March 16, 2007 at 2:35 pm

Yea I am a Mac fanboy but I have to agree with Molly and Daniel. You WILL need more than 1GB of RAM.

Love the Blue Thunder whisper mode comment. Great film.
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Jodie Miners on March 16, 2007 at 4:58 pm

Looks like a good spec, for something that I’d use for general websurfing, a bit of coding and itunes and documents. I would want something much bigger and better if I was running high intensity video editing stuff – definitly more RAM and a much better video card.

The specs I would ad to this are :
Non integrated Sound Card
2nd Optical Drive
TV Tuner Card
MC Remote Control
Higher spec Video Card
2GB RAM

Optionals would be:
Extended Warranty
Fingerprint reader
Nice big widescreen monitor (so then I can do Dual Monitors)

So even my base spec would put the box only at way over $2k which is about $1200 over my price range… I’ve looked at my local el-cheapo supplier and I can get something around $1.5k (box only).

I just specced up something similar on Dell and it was around $2.7k without the extended warranty but included a monitor and office 2007 (couldn’t take them off)
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Herne on March 17, 2007 at 3:16 am

I wouldn’t consider less than 2 GB RAM either. I have 1.5 GB in my PC and it’s not quite enough for the amount of image manipulation I do.

My PC is a P4 3.2 GHz, 1.5 GB Ram, 120 GB HD (which I need to upgrade), Audigy 2 Soundcard, nVidia 64 Meg Video (I think it’s a 5300, which I need to upgrade), 24x DVD ROM, 16x DVD burner (Sony I think)… I have 2 USB 2.0 in the front, 4 USB 2.0 in the back, 1 Firewire 400 (IEEE1394) and a 19″ CRT (soon to be a 20″ wide LCD).

At work I have a Quad G5 (4 x 2.5 Ghz), 4 GB RAM, 250 GB HD (with 7 TB server on the network), and 30″ cinema display.

I’m currently debating on a 15″ MacBook Pro Duo with 2GB of RAM or maybe an ACER laptop with Duo Core.

If I was you, I’d dump Vista and do a clean install of XP. Have a look at the Audigy 2 Soundcard, and I’d go for a 256 Video, probably something like an XFX GeForce 6200 (I need AGP on my machine, but yours is probably PCI Express)
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scientaestubique on March 19, 2007 at 10:13 pm

2GIG of RAM is a good idea. Slowness sucks.
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