Originally Posted by MSIC
Am concerned about RAID in terms of reliability, again given that it needs to still be reliable 4 years down the line without upgrades or them popping in to 'PC World' :angst: .
The other thing about money is that i gather they will be paying for it through the 'Home Computing Initiative', which i'd always assumed meant that you had to get some HP machine and pay for over the next 3 years getting ripped off in the process. Apparently it applies to self-builds also (i havent verified this myself). The upshot of this is, my friend will end up paying £800 for a £1200 machine after tax savings... hence the desire to get a decent spec now.
I know, i know. What can i say .... not my decision!
I had a look at their current machine last night for the first time. The kids (11 and 14 i think) have added lots of "wonderful things" like pop-up blockers (that add spyware), "amusing" moving icons so the mouse is some Irish leprechaun, and there's about 15 different applications running from boot-up such as Kodak easyshare for a camera that is no longer in use. Trust me, although they arn't 'heavy users' in my sense of the terms, they will be pushing a machine to it's limits!!!:mrgreen: