I've only worked in technology for the thick end of 25 years so clearly I'm uniquely unqualified to know what's best nowdays. It's for the business, needs to be a desktop, run win7 (or 8? I dunno, everything else we have runs w7 apart from my Mac obviously - this is why I know nothing about pcs...). Amazon are knocking out Asus units + A monitor for about £400.
I remember misty eyed my first home built PC. Orange 14in screen, 20 meg harddrive. 386 processor. £1500.
Is it a womble-naming approach of just chucking a pin at the Internet or are some brands better than others. It's not going to need any gaming features or owt. Run office/sage/play music and that's about it.
Ta
Build your own buy the parts from Scan or elsewhere, better value and can choose spec.
Use DMX Dimension (Google it to find the Web address) as they list all the current Dell deals. Any of the Vostro line is basically designed for small businesses and they do decent support packages.
Dell prices are usually very good when they're on sale, and you should get a set of parts that all work nicely together. Building your own PC is all physically quite simple but making sure every part is compatible with every other and making sure everything is running at optimum speed is much more of a pain.
Try Dell Outlet, you get some good value machines there at times. You get a better warranty from Dell Outlet Business than you do from regular Dell Outlet. Also check out some of the UK based custom builders - forget names - they seemed to be next best in terms of value/spec when I went on a recent pc buying spree.
Not building one. Far too much like blooming hard. work. All our other pcs are Dells so might start there then. One is 11 years old I just realised and still going strong on XP 🙂
Alex - the TOday Only deals of unbuilt bundles from scan are a bargin. And v easy to put together....
http://www.scan.co.uk/todayonly/index.aspx
£400 for 8gb, 2Tb, 3.4GHz i5
add £50 for a 19" viewsonic.
bargin!
Avoid Dell, build your own from Scan, aria, Dabs etc. You'll get decent components inside. Or use their barebones systems.
Stonor - you know me. And you're still suggesting build your own. Is this some kind of post xmas jolly jape ? 😉 I'll go and have a look but i'm not hopeful of assemblage of anything that a) at best just hum and not work or b) explodes the second I plug it in.
Building your own is easy enough. But I don't really see much point in doing so unless you want to spec the system to component level (or simply think it'll be fun).
TBH, with the criteria you've given, I'd be looking for a known brand with the best warranty.
if you have an OS licence already (if you're decommissioning an old PC for instance or using Linux) then this looks good
Last one we bought was a Mesh, worked well
Dell are actually fairly good for built stuff. Have a look at the clearance and offers section.
If it positively has to be a PC then Dell as MikeWSmith suggests.