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Jennifer83 2007-04-30 12:57
I want to buy a new WinXP computer for work, so no need for 3D features. I noticed the prebuilt PCs from the specialty companies are really expensive, 1500+ just for the 3 19' monitor display, not even including the computer.
I'd rather just buy one 22' and two 19' monitors for a total of under $600.
Does anyone have a suggestion about a desktop PC system from a middle-market company like Dell or IBM that comes with a graphics card that will just let me plug in 3 or maybe 4 DVI monitors with no special hardware or software to buy?
I'd be so happy if I could get one like this.
One more related question on this purchase. I plan to be running many many PDFs, word documents, and browser windows, but not any high-end software (no video editing for example), just simple business applications. Does this mean I should spend my money on more RAM and a single 3gz DualCore rather than a Duo 2.1 Ghz processors?
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Roman Rudenko 2007-05-01 07:58
My first suggestion would be to stick to fully identical monitors. If you won't, you will have colours rendered somewhat differently by monitors. Furthermore, if you would try to maximize an application with two side by side areas (e.g. Acrobat with two facing pages, source code comparison, anything else) across two differently-sized monitors, you will find that they might not match up vertically due to slightly different pixel pitch.
For the computer itself, just look for something that has a DVI-capable video card with a second 16x PCI Express slot open, and drop in a second video card from the same manufacturer (NVidia to NVidia, ATI to ATI). If you can make sure that stock configuration has dual DVI, requirement on PCI-E goes away, as you could throw in any (same manufacturer) regular PCI board to drive the third screen.
For CPU selection, I would suggest a lower-spec Core 2 Duo. Intel Core 2 Duo E4300 is ~150 CAD, while Intel Pentium D 925 is ~110 CAD. Not much of a difference for achitecture that fits the apps you would be running and power/noise reduction. Of course, memory is still king, and 2GB should be the lowest you should accept (but going higher is fairly pointless).
Finally, when you pick your monitors, make sure to pick those that can pivot to portrait mode. Three monitors side by side are going to have excessive width and not enough height in normal state, but are perfect when pivoted. Your document-oriented workflow would be drastically improved, as you would be able to comfortably read whole webpages or paper pages without any scrolling.
You would be better off picking up two larger monitors now and adding a third one later (but not late enough to let it dissapear off market). Meeting your price goal with 19" screens is counter-productive, since 19" is a fairly weird beast that does not play well with any other monitor (weird aspect ratio, weirdly huge pixels, corners cut in manufacturing, cheapo mounts that don't allow changing height or pivoting). Unless your eyesight is detoriating (in which case huge 19" pixels will help), get 17" for economy or 20" for more workspace.
For your reference, my system is an employer's off the shelf Dell with my extra PCI video card and three portrait Samsung 204T (20") side by side.
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