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I didn't consider building my own system, because quite honestly, I don't feel comfortable doing that. BUT I do agree with assembling a custom system with some help. Been doing some poking at local computer shops and found a place here that's been around for 18 years. I took in a list of the parts I wanted and they gave me a quote for a great system that comes in at $800 cheaper than Dell. I get to choose my own motherboard and brand of RAM and I can also afford to get a new LCD. I think when I am ready to buy I am gonna go with these guys. They offer a 2 year waranty and are really freindly and helpful. Getting tech support/assistance is important to me. Thanks everyone for all the help. I was really able to do better research with your input to come to a decision on what the best system would be for graphics. Thanks, Nat

Jim, I am checking out the Sony's as well. I have heard good things about them. Gonna do more research on the Adobe Premier tip. Thanks, Nat

Grazie Professore! Thanks for the detialed explanation and for the advice on the motherboard. I didn't see in any of the customized features I was playing with if Dell lists what motherboards they use. Is there a way to find out? Thanks again for sharing the knowledge. And.... I am still trying to think of a yes or no question! LOL Nat

My current system is a Gateway system... in the first week I had to do TWO drive reformats with the 'aid' of some pretty awful tech support people who didn't seem to know what the heck to do. It's been a terribly unstable system. I'd never buy from GW again, that's for sure. I've heard a lot of great feedback about Dell tho... but I guess you just never know. LOL Nat

Thanks Mike... that's good into to know. Nat

I know, I know... Nat... learn hard coding. After I get the database stuff, i gotta tackle CSS!

Sadly, I had to uninstall Dreamweaver MX as my processor just couldn't handle it. I have a 550MHZ and it requires at least 600 to run properly. I was just learning to play around with CSS via the DW MX CSS editing capabilities. I really want to use CSS, but I am so clueless and haven't really gotten thru the books yet. I found a program called Morphon CSS Editor and was wondering if anyone here has used it with any success. You can check it out here: www.morphon.com Nat

I've seen this processor at Alienware: AMD Athlon™ 64 FX-53 Processor with HyperTransport Technology Is HyperTransport Technology similar to Hyper-Threading technology?

Bruce! Thanks for that link and for listing your specs. And thanks for the warning on the Media Center Ed. of XP. Seems that HP's packages for digital media only come with this version. Nat

Just found another OS I haven't come accross before: Microsoft® Windows® XP Media Center Ed. 2004 Microsoft® Windows® XP Media Center Edition 2004 evolves the home PC so the digital entertainment you want is at your command--Enjoy the convenience of having your digital entertainment right at your fingertips. Easily find, choose and play movies, music, photos, and TV. Create and manage your digital media library and keep in touch with friends and family. Use a single remote control and a unified interface for simple and direct access to entertainment. Watch the TV and movies you want when you want. Easily experience your digital photos and videos with friends and family. Listen to your music or the radio according your taste. Get the computing power, reliability and security you expect from Windows XP Professional. Any thoughts? Is it just unecessary bells and whistles thrown in or would it be something to consider for an art-use computer? Nat

Mike- are you using Athlon? Can someone decode this for me: Intel® Pentium® 4 3.00E GHz/ HT + 1MB L2 cache What is it exactly? Is it better than the 3.2GHz w/800MHz FSB? I am looking at HP Systems right now, specifically "m400y media center pc". Not sure that it has the cooling system I want tho... still perusing the specs. Just looking at all available Brands. Found a Sweet Dell Dimension XPS with the following package (For $3000) Dimension XPS SYSTEM COMPONENTS Dimension XPS Pentium® 4 Processor with HT Technology 3.2GHz w/800MHz FSB, Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional Unit Price Operating System Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional Memory 1GB Dual Channel DDR SDRAM at 400MHz Keyboard Dell® Enhanced Multimedia Keyboard Monitors 17in (16.0 viewable,.25dp)M782 CRT Monitor Video Card NEW 256MB DDR ATI RADEON™ 9800 XT 256XT Hard Drive NEW 240G RAID 0 (2 x 120GB SATA HDDs) 3.5 in Floppy Drive Mouse Dell® 2-button scroll mouse Network Interface Integrated Intel® PRO 1000 Ethernet Modem 56K PCI Telephony Modem 56KWS CD or DVD Drive Dual Drives: 48x CD-RW Drive + 8x DVD+RW Drive Sound Card Sound Blaster Audigy™2 (D) Card w/Dolby 5.1, and IEEE 1394 capability Speakers Dell A425 Speakers with Subwoofer Productivity Software Microsoft® Office Small Business with Money® Security Software McAfee Security Center w/VirusScan,Firewall and Privacy,1-year subscription MCAFE1Y Digital Music Dell Jukebox powered by MUSICMATCH Digital Photography Dell Picture Studio, Paint Shop Pro Trial, Photo Album Starter Edition Limited Warranty, Services and Support Options 1 Year Limited Warranty plus 1 Year At-Home Service XPS Specialized Support Dimension XPS, Specialized Support Multi-Media Players RealOne™ Player, with 14 day SuperPass trial Dell Media Experience Dell Media Experience™ DMX TOTAL: $2,993.40 Think I can get similar type system cheaper elsewhere? Anyone have any experience with Sony product?

Hmmmm... the more research I do I see that HT Technology is exclusive to Pentium. The AMD processors are cheaper and seem comparable, but it seems they have a harder time running multiple applications and having many windows open. Does anyone here use Althlon and what has your experience been? Thanks, Nat

Jim, Sounds like exactly the type of workload I'd be working with. And.. I really gotta get on cable or DSL... but I will wait for the new system for all of that. Dial up does suck! Do you know anything about running Adobe Premier off a system with a P4 with HT Technology and 1G RAM? Would I need more RAM if I wanted to run Adobe Premier? I'd most likely just have AP running alone while doing video editing. Thanks again Nat

Jim, Yes I compress slices at different compression rates... Depending on what the graphic is and how important clear display is... I will play with different formats and compression to see what produces the best visual result with the fastest d/l time. My load times are not terrible, but I try to always re-evaluate things to see if I can make graphics/pages/text load faster. Nat

Thanks guys! I tried using both and they showed the same thing. I use public_html... just wondered if there was any difference. Nat

Hey gang! Thanks for all the great replies. Kasey- do you recall how much you paid in total for your system? If you don't want to post the price here, you can PM me with it if you are comfortable. Does the RAID drive make a huge difference over the standard ATA drive? gaberville yes, MACs are the best for music, video and graphics editing... but right now I don't have the cash to go out and buy all new software as I already have a ton of it that I just want to transfer to the new PC system and upgrade. I am aslo building a recording studio in the next few years and will be using a MAC for the basis of that. I prefer to have one PC and one MAC for the future. PC's have come a long way, not as efficient as the MAC, but like others have said.. there is a lot more software available for the PC and migrating software from PC to PC is much easier than PC to MAC. TCH-Mike- yes you are right about the Alien PC's being way overpriced! The one thing I did like was that they all come with that extra cooling fan. I am not sure if this is an issue with the new 2.8+GHz computers... not sure if they have compensated for heat well enough in these new systems. I know that my 550-MhZ gets terribly hot and the video card burns out. I am very wary about building my own system from scratch. I am mildly technical... but not overly so and would hate to mess something like my own system up. I also would like tech support and I know that if I build myself I can't get that. Thanks for all of your part suggestions.. I am pricing out different systems with different companies and just knowing what parts are good ones helps a lot. TCH-Jim-So get as much RAM as possible then? I guess the good thing is you can always buy more if needed. Maybe I will start with 1 or 2 GB and go from there. From the research I have been doing I have read that there is some new technology coming down the pipeline. I am looking to buy a system in the next 6-12 months... not sure how much is set to change... but I heart that Radeon has a new card coming out soon. I was also wondering what the difference is between AMD Athlon and Pentium 4 technology. Is there a huge difference? I have always read that Pentium is better, but some people have suggested that Athlon is fine? Does Athlon have similar hyper-threading technology? I ask because there is a remote chance that I will eventually want to do some small-time video editing (for the web)... just want to make sure I get the right processing power if I want to do this. Beng able to use multiple programs (up to 5 at a time) running is very important to me. Thanks again, Nat

Jim, I use Fireworks to optimize all my graphics and slice them up. Maybe I am doing all I can to compress already and there is nothing else I can do? I use the method you stated above... whenever possible I use GIF... I use JPG for photo's mostly and they are compressed at 70 or 80. Oh well.... maybe there isn't much I can do for some types of layouts. Thanks for the pointers. Nat

TCH Fam.... In the last few years I have seriously gotten into designing websites and digital art/web graphics. My current system is a 550mHz Pentium 3 PC system with a Windows 98se platform, and quite honestly... it's outdated and getting useless! I am looking to buy a completely new system but I need to find out what the best type of system would be for my uses. I use these programs every day: Photoshop Dreamweaver Fireworks Illustrator Fontographer Quark Xpress I want to upgrade my software as I know the newest versions of all these programs are far superior than what I am using now. I need something that is fast, can handle multiple programs running at the same time and something that is more geared to a Photoshop/Web design user. I'm getting into Flash Web design and right now my system can't even handle Flash 5, so I would need something that can handle Flash MX 2004 as I'm thinking of buying that program. I was thinking that getting a system with a Pentium® 4 Processor with Hyper Threading Technology (3.4GHz w/800MHz FSB) would be a good start. Is there something better on the PC market, or is this as fast as they come? I hear that Hyper Threading Technology is great for using multiple applications at once. Does anyone know anything more about HT Technology? There seems to be a HUGE price difference between the 3.2GHz processor and the 3.4... is there THAT big of a difference, and would I really use the power of a 3.4? Not sure what the differences are. Gonna get the Win XP Pro platform as I hear it's better on the security tip than the Home Edition. I'm not sure if I need more than 1GB Dual Channel DDR SDRAM (400MHz)? Would I need more than that to run everything? Is it better to buy as much RAM as possible, or can I just get 1GB to start and see how that goes and upgrage later if needed? I am also interested in what Video card is the best to buy. I've had a lot of issues with my Video cards burning out about every 8-12 months and I will need something that will last longer. I'm currently using a RADEON 7500 card. I found a company that caters to audio/video/gaming systems (alienware.com), but am not sure if I could just do as well by customizing a Dell or Gateway. I am trying to find out what all this is gonna cost. Sky is not the limit as far as price goes, so I want the best performance for a good price. Other things I want with the system are: MS Office 2003 (with Word, Outlook, Publisher, Powerpoint) Ethernet Card A really good cooling fan! 56K Modem Sound System (is Sound Blaster still good?) Keyboard Mouse Speakers I'd like to get a Wacom tablet as well.... I think I might just stick with the Flat LCD I already have. Thanks for reading this and I appreciate any advice, tips you can give. Peace, Nat

Just wondering about this... I use Dreamweaver... when you define a site and choose FTP upload they ask you for your host directory. What is the difference between using www/ and using public_html? Is there any difference or a prefered way of naming? Thanks, Nat

Kasey, Thanks for the examples. I have used Jacks form mail for another site. You made my day with the radio button suggestion. Exactly what I was seeking. Will, I will check that site out. Thanks Nat

Dave, That's good to know. I was mostly concerned about getting graphics to load faster... so maybe using this won't help much after all. Thanks, Nat

Been doing some reading on spam, web forms etc... I keep reading that it is best to avoid using mailto: in order for people to send email to a recipient from a web page. I keep reading that the best way to have someone send email from a web site is to make use of a form. One place I was reading stated the following: "Create the form to get the input from your visitors. The form can email you the results or add them directly to a database. Just make sure the script DOES NOT get passed the email address in a hidden field. The email address should be either coded in the script itself or in a parameter file of some kind." The site where I read the above also noted: "Don't use those special email encoding JavaScript's - These convert an email address into Unicode. It becomes unreadable to human beings, but it's pretty simple to find and convert these. if the spammers haven't figured it out yet then it's just a matter of time." My question is how do you make sure that the email address cannot be harvested by these email address harvesters? Is there a specific bit of code that can protect email addresses completely? Also, what if the site has a whole email contact directory? It is so much easier to use mailto: to list multiple contacts and also to do an advanced email link with subject. Is it still better to do up a form for each contact? Are there any other ways to protect email addresses? Thanks for any suggestions you might have. Nat

Snipe! Got it! Thanks so much Now just so I don't get into trouble... Can I use this program here at TCH? I have a regular starter hosting accounts. Please let me know if this would be OK to use to see if it helps the load times for the sites I have hosted here. Thanks, Nat

Kevan, They are still waiting for budget to get DSL and approval to network. There is a new Ambassador who just took office this week. Not sure when or if it will happen at this point as they are due for elections in June and the gov't is in a state of flux right now. I will keep you posted tho and if I need help, may just take you up on your very kind offer! Peace, Nat

Budman, Thanks for the links to those OS projects. I have checked them out. HC has taken on the challenge of tutoring me in the area of databases and coding. I am working on the project now. Once it's done I'll come back and post a link. Thanks again for the suggestions. Natalie