If not RAID 1 (mirroring for those who don't know what it is), then at least an external drive to backup Daily to and/or a subscription to something like crashplan. In this digital age you really can't afford to NOT to have a backup plan.
Though RAID1 won't keep you safe from accidental deletion or filesystem corruption (which is rare nowadays) Sent from my iSomething On May 23, 2011, at 2:04 PM, "David W. Fenton" <lists.fin...@dfenton.com> wrote: > On 23 May 2011 at 14:44, Lee Dengler wrote: > >> Any suggestions would greatly appreciated. > > It's difficult to recommend brands any more as so many of the top > nameplates just don't have good quality any longer. I still recommend > Dell desktops to my clients and haven't had any significant problems > with any of them (with rare exceptions). > > For a 5-year Windows machine (i.e., will not need significant > upgrades for that period of time), you'll pay in the range of $1500 > up. These are my recommendations: > > 1. Windows 7 64-bit > 2. 8GBs of RAM > 3. mirrored RAID 1 high-speed hard drives (i.e., a pair of hard > drives where 1 mirrors the other -- it increases performances since > the controller can read from either drive, but also if one fails, the > other one is still OK). > 4. high-end video, though not the most expensive possible. > 5. the largest monitor you can afford, or better, two reasonably > large monitors. > > In general, the bottom half of Dell's product line can't be > configured with this spec, only the Dell Dimension and Optiplex lines > of standard desktops work for this. That's because the lower-priced > lines are CHEAP and not expandable, and simply don't support the > newer components with the highest performance. > > I would love to be able to buy a desktop with the OS on a solid-state > drive and use the RAID 1 array for data only, but that doesn't exist > yet except on the gaming machines (which are way too expensive, in my > opinion). > > Don't skimp on either RAM, hard drive speed or video speed/RAM. All > of those things have a huge impact on performance and when you trim > from the specs for each of those components, you lose a huge amount > in performance. That's why one of these $1500 desktops will vastly > outperform any machine half its price. > > You can probably save money on the RAM if you buy the machine with > 2GBs (single DIMM) and then upgrade it to 8GBs from Crucial.com, but > I have never considered that worth the effort when buying a new > machine. But it's worth comparing the price from Crucial with what > you'd pay from the vendor. > > -- > David W. Fenton http://dfenton.com > David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ > > _______________________________________________ > Finale mailing list > Finale@shsu.edu > http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
