Pre-built DELL as a recording computer??

B

berkleywoods

New member
As I'm sure many of you are aware, Dell is running deals on computers that give you a great system at an unbelievable price. I'm putting together my recording studio and I am purshasing the Delta 1010 card.

How do these new Dell's stack up as a recording computer?? Anyone know nething about them? Anyone used one??

Here are the specs...

Processor
Intel® Celeron® processor at 1.1GHz

Memory
128MB DDR SDRAM

Hard Drive
20GB1 Ultra ATA/100 Hard Drive

Monitor
15 in (13.8 viewable) E551 Monitor

Video Cards
16MB ATI Rage Ultra 4X AGP Graphics Card

CD/DVD ROM Drive
16x/10x/40x CD-RW Drive with Roxio's Easy CD Creator®

Speakers
Harman Kardon Speakers

Operating System
Microsoft® Windows® XP Home Edition

Floppy Drive
Mouse
3.5 Floppy Drive


800 bucks isn't bad....Obviously, I would benefit from another Hard drive... But nething that you notice?? Thoughts, comments, opinions...?
 
For $800 you could do better.

15" Monitors are obsolete to say the least - there is no reason to not buy anything less than 17" inches nowadays - you can run higher resolutions and still have a legible display.

You would do yourself a favor in the long run to go with a real P4 chip rather than the Celeron. Celerons are consumer grade CPU's and lack extra processing power found in the P4's/Athlons. They are really intended for mainstream use (Word, Excel, browsing the weB) and not math intensive apps like DAW.

Considering how cheap memory is now, I would not use anything less than 256Mb.

I recommend staying away from ATI products. I own a All-in-wonder 128
and will never buy another ATI product. Their customer support/driver availablilty just plain sucks. It doesn't sound like it makes use of the never Radeon chipset so you are taking a huge performance cut by using an older chipset. If you want performance go with GeForce chipset cards. If you want excelleint support and overall reliablility go with Matrox G450 cards.

Personally, the biggest reason to aviod a Dell is proprietary configuration/hardware. You are shooting yourself in the foot when you want to upgrade down the road.
 
I agree with brzilian, Dells are commercial. Think about building your own system around your audio needs. Do some research on the software and hardware your going to use and build based on that.
 
Hate to beat a dead horse, but I don't mind repeating whats already been said :)


I wouldn't even recommend a Dell for anything. Not very well priced, very anti-upgrading. They don't deal well with you installing anything new. I mean, on mine it has a little refridgerator switch to tell you if the case has been taken off. Well, no shit, I took it off to put in a decent sound card you ignorant machine...:mad:
 
build your own pc......get an asus cusl2 series motherboard and a pentium III 1Ghz CPU....this is still a good choice.....these systems are very stable and i doubt that anyone would say there is a bottleneck issue.
 
Berk,

Just to give another viewpoint: I have a Dell, and so do five of my friends and clients, and they have all been fabulous. One of the best features of Dell computers is they are very quiet. Another is that if anything goes wrong they'll send someone to your house to fix it (if that's part of your agreement). Yes, there are cheaper places to buy a computer. But paying a little more for a Dell is not necessarily a bad idea. Especially if you don't want to risk making a lot of hardware compatibility decisions yourself.

But I do agree about buying a large monitor. Heck, buy two monitors if you can afford it. I have a 21-inch and also a 17-inch, and I can't imagine working any other way.

--Ethan
 
>I mean, on mine it has a little refridgerator switch to tell you if the case has been taken off.

What year was that?

I just installed a new Dimension system (alas, not mine... :( )
and the case was very cool. You put it on its side and press a button and it opens up like a car hood on hinges! The extra rails to mount stuff in the 5" drive bays were hanging on clips inside the case. The cable routing was the cleanest I've ever seen.
 
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