Digital BW, The Print

Here's something to think about. Yesterday I bought my mother an 
eMachines computer at Bestbuy. For $403 including tax, she got a 
computer with the following:

#AMD Athlon\ufffd X2 dual-core processor 4050e, 3GB DDR2 memory, double-layer 
DVD\ufffdRW/CD-RW drive with Labelflash support, 320GB hard drive, NVIDIA 
GeForce 6150 SE graphics, 15-in-1 media reader and Windows Vista Home 
Premium with SP1
# 18.5" flat-panel widescreen LCD monitor with ultrafast 5 ms response 
time, 10,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio and antiglare screen treatment; 2 
built-in speakers.

This type of computer is perfectly fine for word processing, emailing, 
and web use.

I mention this because you might want to have separate computers for 
web/general use and for Photoshop use. If you're Photoshop computer is 
not connected to the internet, you won't need anti-virus or anti spyware 
software running all the time which can sap computer speed. You also 
maximize compatibility, as your web machine can have a 32 bit operating 
system, and you can also keep a back-up copy of your digital files on it.

For the Photoshop computer, lots of ram makes the biggest difference. 
Hence, you'll want XP, Vista, or Windows 7 64 bit system with 8 gigs or 
more of ram. You'll want a dedicated hard drive for a Photoshop scratch 
disk. Solid state would be best, but even just a dedicated drive helps. 
An 8-core processor probably won't be that big of an improvement over a 
quad core one. The latest version of photoshop does use a video card for 
some operations, but getting a super fast gaming video card, or two 
video cards, isn't cost effective.

My nephew, who has a computer science degree, recently bought a computer 
from:

http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/

He certainly could've put together his own computer, but he said he 
couldn't do so for as cheaply as cyberpowerpc did. And they allow lots 
of customization. You might try emailing them what you want to do and 
see what they recommend.

Btw., getting a good battery power backup system, such as an APC UPS, is 
very important. Most computer crashes are hard drive crashes, and 
blackouts are one of the biggest causes of hard drive failures.


Hope this helps,
Peter