I just bought a Dell too and found it very competitive price-wise. I compared with other possibilities, including building a computer from components, but getting the same machine that way was much more expensive actually, at least with high-end components. If I had wanted just something to browse the web, read email and write documents I might have chosen different, there are great deals in shops for low-powered machines, any manufacturer can make that and there's much competition.

Yeah my father's Dell is noisy as Hell; but it's a Dimension 5150C, a Pentium D enclosed in a tiny case, very difficult ventilation (and lousy mechanical design). However my new XPS is all but silent--it's huge though.

well it is your decision and thats ok.
But you could have saved around 100 dollars buliding it and ordering the parts (i did a little search of all the components of the gx520 and thats what I found) or even better getting a better cpu... just for starters look at this price on a screen(http://www.google.com/products/catal...tle#ps-sellers) which is sometimes the costliest part...

BTw everywhere it says that it comes with win xp so you don't need 4gb of ram, I think win xp can only read up to 3 gb of ram (that is already a lot). are you thinking on runnig it on Vista or win7?


anyway, the way you did it is easier and you can "feel" more safe...
congrats :max:
what are you going to play now on that computer?:clap:

It doesn't depend on XP or Vista, but on 32-bit or x64. Both XP and Vista x64 can address virtually unlimited memory, and both XP and Vista 32-bit address 4 GB (=2³² bytes). Of these 4 GB the default setting is reserve 2 GB for applications and the other 2 GB for kernel-mode processes. You can tweak this to 3 and 1, although I don't know if that's a good idea depending on what (my guess is that you're in the clear if it doesn't cause Windows to crash).

I change my memory allocation, on PC, to be programmes3:1background if I need to use things like Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Illustrator and Photoshop, Office and FireFox at the same time.

If I use games, I set it the other way.

I haven't experienced any problems so far... I've never bought a PC ready made - always built them.

Only problem I have is power-supply and RAM.
It's hard to find a PSU that is affordable and has enough output and cables for everything you need now.
And I'm just stupid with RAM. I always get the one option that doesn't fit.

I was referring to this from the fifth horseman on an old thread about Doubler's new computer
"
Quote:
2x1Gb DDR3 (or 4x1Gb)

The 32-bit version of Windows XP has a limitation of memory adressing space to 4GB. That is both RAM and pagefile combined, so if you get 4 GB of RAM the pagefile will have to go (and good riddance - it wears down your HDD faster).
It seems the OS won't detect full 4 GB of RAM anyway, so I suggest to draw the line at 3 GB (2x1 + 2x512). "

That's odd... My RAM allocation is what it's supposed to be and my page-file's at 2046MB across all drives (that have the space).

I don't think I could run as many programmes at once if I didn't have my trusty old swapfile.
I hate having to save, close, open, load, change, close, open, load, decide it was better before, close, open, load, revert, save...

My apps desktop is littered with duplicates. I really should tidy it up.
And my games one... I've been lazy and written batch files for all my DosBox games so I can just open them.