Recommend me a computer.

[Bluepete]

I decided to get an HP desktop thingumy. It's an i5, 8 gb RAM, 2 TB disk, etc etc. Takes five seconds to open Lightroom! That's awesome, especially as the previews work in "real time" now, rather than 30 second waiting times.

The old machine has been formatted and is now munching it's way through my DVD collection in the living room. I'm using Media Browser through Media Centre. Ripped using WinX platinum at the same audio and image quality as the original dvd.

Happy!

Pete

[maviczap]

Good use for an old PC Pete. Winx is great for ripping to the hard drive.

I found DVD's with multiple episodes a bit annoying & time consuming to get each episode ripped.

So all I do is rip a complete image of the disc as an ISO file. Takes up a bit more drive space than a ripped version of the disc.

To play this image, I use a virtual DVD drive & mount the disc image on that to play it like a normal DVD.

It means you can select the episode from the menu, as you would on a normal DVD.

I've got a wireless keyboard, with a mouse wheel built in to use with my media centre

[Bluepete]

The platinum edition allows the entire film to be ripped as is, with the 5.1 Dolby (or whatever) sound as is. So far (16 movies done) each worksperfectly. Luckily, a mate is a wiz at this shizzle, he's set me up and shown me how to do it all.

The media doodad is very clever, metadata, cast lists, actor search, and so on. All very clever.

Pete

[maviczap]

Films is easy

TV series like Father Ted with lots of episodes are easier to rip & play as a disc image.

Think I have about 400+ on my centre, although a lot of these I bought on a hard drive on Ebay, already ripped.

[keith_d]

I'm in the PC camp too.

Quad core AMD (a current generation i5 is faster)
8Gb of memory
256Gb SSD for OS and software
Mirrored 2Tb drives for storing photos
My old 60Gb for work in progress
An old PC in the garage with another 2Tb to store backups

Memory is becoming cheap enough that I'll probably upgrade to 16Gb, just for those occasions when I've got a lot of images open at the same time.

Keith.

[Luckypants]

Originally Posted by Bluepete

I decided to get an HP desktop thingumy. It's an i5, 8 gb RAM, 2 TB disk, etc etc. Takes five seconds to open Lightroom! That's awesome, especially as the previews work in "real time" now, rather than 30 second waiting times.

The old machine has been formatted and is now munching it's way through my DVD collection in the living room. I'm using Media Browser through Media Centre. Ripped using WinX platinum at the same audio and image quality as the original dvd.

Happy!

Pete

Pete

Do you mind saying how much and where from? I'm after a new desktop for use as home computer and working from home (4-days a week). I need to upgrade (pref. Windows 7 for compatibility with work) as my trusty old XP-Pro Dell is running out of software that will run on it. It is not really up to the job of running Win 7 and latest MS Office versions, so upgrade of this not on the table.

[Bluepete]

Not at all Mike. It's an HP from ebuyer.com. I've just checked the link and it's discontinued, but here are the details anyway. I paid £440 for it.

http://m.ebuyer.com/699662

I chose that one for the processor, RAM, memory and that it had HDMI to connect to the cinema system which it does perfectly. I suppose a similar spec machine would be as fast, this thing runs like greased lightning compared to the old one.

Pete

[Luckypants]

Thanks man, I like the look of HP now. Decided mine needs a card reader and thats the only extra.

[Bluepete]

I thought I'd need one, but even though it's not mentioned in the specs, it does have an SD reader built in.

Pete

[Luckypants]

Cool. Seems to be good spec for what I want. What are the graphics like?