Killer PC for Digital Photography?

Dear All

My old PC was state of the art in 2000, and has been a great workhorse. I upgraded it from a Pentium 4 (remember those) with 256MB RAM and 30GB hard disk, to a 2.0 GHz processor with 1024MB RAM and 60GB hard disk, but that's starting to creak too...

So the new machine has Intel Core Duo processor (2.83 GHz - I toyed with Quadcore, but that's for serious applications and multasking, which I won't need, and if I do, I'm sure I can upgrade in the future), 3GB RAM, 720GB hard disc, DVD/CD read/write drive with Blu-Ray read and a 24" widescreen monitor. It's also Bluetooth enabled. Can't wait for it to come...

Thoughts?

Ivan

The perfect PC for photography?

I was wondering while driving in this morning...what is the perfect/ideal set up and specs for a PC for photography and high-end digital imaging? What software is essential, and what peripherals would be required? As you may be aware, I am thinking of updating my 7 year old creaking PC (which has been upgraded twice, including maxxing out on RAM, ROM and a new motherboard, as well as being on it's second CD-R drive).

My old machine works, but can be slow sometimes with CS1. It's specs are an embarrasment:

- 2.8 GHz processor; not too bad, works well most of the time. This is an upgrade from the original 1.8 GHz
- 60 GB hard drive. Was originally 30, then I bolted another on.
- USB 1.1 x 2. I also added 2 USB 2.0 slots to speed things up on memory card transfer
- RAM: just over 1GB, upgraded from a paultry (though spec-leading in 2001) 250Mb.
- Optical drives; 1 DVD ROM drive; 1 CD-R drive.

I am currently looking at a Dell; specs below:



Any thoughts you have on this would be much appreciated...

Hope you have a great Christmas and New Year, and we can all see lots of new shots come January!! We need to beat last years posting total. If we all posted once per week, that would be 6 a week, and over 300 for the year!

Cheers
Ivan