Using "home" branded microsoft products for business uses..

[SidewinderINC]

the workstation machines start getting pricier!

I suppose I could get him to call up dell customer services and get them to talk through his needs, that sounds easiest

[divine]

They'll probably start trying to flog him a £500 nVidia Quadro card though, at the first mention of CAD

It's those cards that ramp the workstation price up, even the most basic workstation machine comes with a £125 worth of ATi FirePro.

It's probably overkill for him though really.

[SidewinderINC]

Originally Posted by divine

They'll probably start trying to flog him a £500 nVidia Quadro card though, at the first mention of CAD

It's those cards that ramp the workstation price up, even the most basic workstation machine comes with a £125 worth of ATi FirePro.

It's probably overkill for him though really.

good point.

[SidewinderINC]

These are two systems I've priced up.

The cheaper of the two doesn't have office (can't remove it from the first one, and it's not required) and doesn't have a few other things that aren't totally necesarry I think

[Mark]

The first one looks like better value - but only if you need the features. I don't think you do, which makes the cheaper one (plus monitor) a better option.

[Jingo]

I personally get by just fine on a 1GB Sapphire Radeon card that cost about £60 two years ago - no matter how much visualising or CAD work he will be doing, I'm willing to bet that he has no need for a specialist or 'heavy duty' gfx card.

I imagine the output of his work will be primarily 2D, and even heavy-duty 3D or Vis work would be easy work for most multi-core machines

I'm often running Autocad 2011 + PS CS5 + A render system (+ anciliaries i.e. Email / browser / music) at the same and my 2009 built quad-core, 6GB 1333 RAM system happily chomps through it very swiftly

Hopefully this might help with an aspect of 'what you might need', and in terms of service/warranty I'm uncertain of what to advise...

...until last week's failed psu, I've not had any problems with my self build, and although most parts have 3-5 year warranties on them, I'm not sure the faffing would suit your friend's situation (or your peace!). I've enjoyed great service from Dell when I dropped a huge book on my laptop my laptop broke - it was collected and returned with new bits within 4 days.

This was under the standard warranty which comes with 1 year but can be extended beyond with various packages at fairly reasonable prices. When you get to the 4+ years stage I'm not sure how much you want to warranty anyhow!

Not sure if this helps much but I hope so

[Mark]

For a business, I'd never recommend self-build - unless you're a PC hardware business. All due respect to those here who supplied self-build systems to companies (I know of at least two), but the reason is simple - what happens when the machine breaks? Who repairs it? How long does it take? What happens to the business while it's being repaired?

Even for home use I'd suggest Dell unless you know what you're doing and can take the downtime.

[Jingo]

Definately a big point to consider - good post Mark

I used my self build for my business with no problems, but as a point Mark mentioned, I was capable of patching up any problems within swift, non-damaging timescale (not that I actually had any issues) and had a sufficient temporary secondary system also.

So although it's definately possible, there's lots of other considerations and it probably wouldn't suit your friend; I think my post was mainly to help with the potential spec of what he might require in that field of work

[Toby]

Originally Posted by Burble

I've had limited success with compatibility mode, it usually does a good job but it isn't perfect.

XP mode is a nice option especially as it's quite seamless - you aren't necessarily aware than you're booting up another OS with the exception of the initial startup time. The integration into 7 is very nice though as you get an icon for the app that'll start the VM and the app.

Whilst the integration is nice if you are indeed using it to support some legacy apps, I personally hated the way they removed half the options compared to Virtual PC.

I removed XP Mode and instead installed Virtual PC 2007 SP1 which works perfectly on Win7. You lose some of the integration but gain more control, including the ability to use it without hardware virtualization support, although performance will obviously be atrocious by comparison.