Buy a new computer now or wait 6-12 months

Anything fabulous on the horizon?

[jsinger]

Rust spots are showing on my 3 1/2 year old main machine. Need somthing better for home movies. But that can wait. Have plenty of cash. Don't play computer games. I do some work with web graphics.

Not impressed with monitors currently on the market, at least the reasonably priced ones.

Technically, computers haven't changed much in the past two years, with top clock speeds stuck around 3 gigs.

Would you buy now or wait? 6 months? 12 Months? Longer?

[loanuniverse]

I think you ought to look at what can give you the biggest bang for the buck.

My power supply died the other day, and I saw it as an opportunity to upgrade my motherboard {$55} and get an updated hard drive {one with 7200 rpm}. All together, I spent $180 and couldn't be happier with being able to boot into windows 2000 in 10 seconds as opposed to thirty seconds.

I also get to use my DDR memory to its full potential and even play around with overclocking if I wanted to. Sure spending a couple of hours moving all the guts from one box to another as well as doing a fresh OS install is not fun, but it is a good stop gap until I decide to do a full upgrade to the next generation of chips.

[drbrain]

Well, you can buy an iMac G5 right now, great for home movies. (iMovie is far, far better than MS Movie Maker.)

[ncreegan]

While iMovie is vastly superior, one must ask if it is really worth paying double what you'd pay for a comparable PC just to be able to edit home movies with a more friendly program?

As for technology... there's nothing overly exciting coming out in the way of desktops, unless you are into building your own. You can build quite a machine for half of what you'd pay in a store, if you were so inclined. Laptops are starting to look more promising, but for movie editing, most fall tragically short. The latest Powerbooks are sleek and light but don't have the same get up and go as an Area 51-m. I own both (plus a Satellite 3.06ghz) and performance wise, the Area 51-m can't be beat.

[drbrain]

Let's see on this price thing:

A 20" Cinema display costs $1300.

The 20" iMac costs $1900.

$1900 - $1300 = $600. $600 won't buy a PC that performs as well as an iMac G5. Also, I have yet to see a PC LCD that matches the quality of an Apple LCD for a significantly lower price.

Oh yes, and iMovie is that much better than MS Movie Maker.

[ggrot]

If you want bang for your buck in a digital movie environment, here is what I suggest. First, go buy an xBox. They retail at $200, but can be found online for $150 new (cheaper on ebay maybe). Now, go install linux on your xBox: [xbox-linux.org...]

You now have a linux machine with 10gb drive, 733mhz processor, a very nice graphics card, dvd drive, and 10/100 ethernet. Its also small, sleek, quiet, and can play xBox games.

Now, for the monitor. Go on ebay and find a 1000+ Lumens computer projector. Should cost about $600-$800 for a decent one. Hook the two up, add some usb peripherals, and you've got yourself a really nice video system for just a little under $1,000.

I've done roughly this except I had an old 833 machine growing dust that I used instead of the xBox.

[ncreegan]

That's really an awesome idea, but let me add that the newest xboxes are really a pain to deal with. Instead, by a used one that is at least a year old (MS modified the xbox to make everything harder, the best ones are a year or so old.)

[Macro]

Technically, computers haven't changed much in the past two years, with top clock speeds stuck around 3 gigs.

You've got to be kidding! 1394b (Firewire 800), Intel 925/915 chipsets, SATAII (and stuff like NCQ on the ICH6), PCI Express, DDR2, WD Raptors with 10K spindle speeds in SATA, Opterons with the on-CPU memory controllers, DDR3 RAM/improved GPUs on graphics cards, CPU cache going up to 2 MB on both Intel (EE) and AMD (FX), Nocona and Turnwater, dual core, BTX's new thermal standard to allow even faster components....and that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Speed doesn't come from CPU GHz alone.

Of course, "technically, computers haven't changed much..." if you compare them to ENIAC :)

(BTW, clock speeds aren't stuck at anything. Heard of Moore's law? Current highest Intel CPU generally available is 3.6 with 3.8 and 4.0 GHz due out soon.)

[edward301]

You could stick it out till longhorn arrives but its expected around 2006 which is quite a long weight.

[jsinger]

"(BTW, clock speeds aren't stuck at anything. Heard of Moore's law? Current highest Intel CPU generally available is 3.6 with 3.8 and 4.0 GHz due out soon.)"

And two years ago top clock speeds were about 3.0 or even 3.2ghz, as I recall. It does seem that Moore's "law" has been suspended.

[Macro]

It does seem that Moore's "law" has been suspended.

That doesn't seem to be the general consensus. Besides, I hate to be pedantic, but Moore's law isn't specifically about CPU speeds - maybe my wording misled you.

There's a reason why AMD went down a different route to describe their XP CPUs and Intel has done the same with their new 775s.

And two years ago top clock speeds were about 3.0 or even 3.2ghz

Er, not from where I was sitting. Heard of hyperthreading? FX/Extreme Edition (Xeon amounts of cache on P4s)? 64 bit Athlons? They are all MAJOR developments in the processor market. In the last two years.