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AnandTech: A Guide to Choosing the Right 19″ LCD Monitor – 7 Models Reviewed. Monitors have truly gotten cheap. You can get a very nice 19″ one for just $500 or so. Here’s the summary:

* “Samsung 193P”:http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php?masterid=2429593&blsrt=1. If you have $650-700 and want the best in quality, this is the one to beat right now.
* “ViewSonic Q190MB”:http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php?masterid=3296576&blsrt=1. This is nearly as good as the Samsung but is just $480.
* “NuTech L921G”:http://www.streetprices.com/Electronics/Computer_Hardware_PC/Monitors/LCD_19in/SP2573202.html for $411 which is identical to the Viewsonic technically is very good. You can get two NuTechs for about the price of a single 193P and a dual head display is the bomb believe me!

Paul Thurrott’s SuperSite for Windows: Windows XP Home Edition vs. Professional Edition, What’s the difference?. This is the first PC I’ve bought that uses XP Home instead of my buying XP Professional from the Microsoft Company Store. I have to say having used it for a while at work, I’m not sure it is that important in a small business environment.

We don’t use Active Directory and we don’t need lots of permissions for desktop users. Saves quite a bit the list is $99 for XP Home and $149 for XP Professional when you are building up a laptop.

We are looking for a new notebook standard at “Ignition”:http://ignitionpartners.com. I’m partial to the build-it-yourself models that ASUS has. I have the older M3N and it is just as good as any other that I’ve seen (Dell and IBM thin and light), but you spec exactly what you want. Here are some reviews;

* ASUS M5200N: Elder Brother of ASUS S5200N

There are two places to get it:

* “JNCS”:http://www.jncs.com/static-temp/nb-as-m5n.php. The build it option has a 768MB with Pentium M Model 735 at $1,298. Then you add a nice big hard drive $189 for a 80GB 7200 Hitachi 8MB drive and $129 for Windows XP Home plus $20 for ground delivery and you get a screaming laptop for $1748. This is a well know reseller.
* “Proportable”:http://proportable.com/detail.aspx?ID=5. 768MB, Pentium M Model 745 (1.8GHz), 80GB 5400, no XP for $1772 not including shipping, so quite a bit more than the JNCS, but I’ve ordered from them before and they are reliable.
* “Topmic.com”:http://store.topmic.com/asm5nmincela.html.
$1300 for base plus a 512MB Ram, 1.8GHz Pentium M 745 and 80GB 4200 rpm (so less power) and $99 for XP Home is $1658 with free shipping. Low price, but I’ve not heard of them, so caveat emptor
* “Chembooks”:http://www.discountlaptops.com/index.php?section=configurator&regular_model_id=898&model_id=803. They have the $1690 with the Pentium M 745 (1.8GHz), 512MB memory, 80GB 4200RPM Toshiba hard drive and Windows XP Home. NOt a bad deal, but haven’t heard of them.

Well, it is Christmas time, so this might be a good guide for those of you who want to give the gift of computing. As usual, we’ll cover a “high value” system and a “low cost” system. The best value means the best price/performance for a computer but it is more expensive. The “low cost” means it not insanely cheap, but as low as you can get without really sacrificing either quality or good performance.

Ironically, most “high value” systems seem to come out at $1000-$1500 while the “low cost” ones come out at $500-750 no matter how I do it. I mainly use Anandtech and pricegrabber as guides for this. They are the best at this analysis so far. In each case, we’ll use overclocking to improve the overall performance.

The main references are:

* AnandTech: Price Guides November 2004: CPU and Motherboards. The socket 754 for low cost and the socket 939 for high value.
* “Optical and Disk Drivers”:http://anandtech.com/guides/showdoc.aspx?i=2267. Not many changes here, but the big splurge is going two spindles for the high value system. For both systems, the $70 NEC 3500A is a great choice. Dual Layer, 16x DVD writer, what could be better?
* “Video and Memory”:http://anandtech.com/guides/showdoc.aspx?i=2259. Memory-wise, last month the Crucial “Ballistix 3200″:http://www.anandtech.com/memory/showdoc.aspx?i=2145&p=9
* “19″ LCD Monitors Reviewed”:http://anandtech.com/displays/showdoc.aspx?i=2289. Good review of wonderful monitors.

h3. High Value PC

Ok, the main controversial recommendation here is to have a two disk drive system. Disk to me is the biggest achilles heel of performance right now. Having two spindles makes things really, really fast as swapping is the single biggest detriment to performance. It is expensive, but super worth it.

| Part | Cost | Comment |
| Athlon 64 3200+ | “$198″:http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php?masterid=4605951&blsrt=1 | 2GHz |
| OCZ Platinum Rev 2 | “$270″:http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php/masterid=3762101 | Fast CL2 2×512 |
| “Gigabyte K8NXP-9″:http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2273 | $130 | K8NXP-SLI coming |
| “NEC 3500A”:http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2260&p=18 | “$67″:http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php?masterid=3648375&blsrt=1 | DVD Burner |
| “Maxtor DiamondMax 300″:http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200410/200410087B300S0-2_1.html | “$196″:http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php?masterid=3173558&blsrt=1 | Fast and big |
| “Western Digital 740GD”:http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200401/20040126WD740GD_1.html | “$172″:http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php?masterid=1733497&blsrt=1 | The fastest |
| nVidia 6800GT | $400 | Not as fast with Half Life, but can SLI |
| nuTech 691 | $410 | Get a pair and live! |
| “Seasonic Silent Silencer 460″:http://silentpcreview.com/article28-page3.html | “$109″:http://www.newegg.com/app/searchProductResult.asp?Submit=Go&Range=1&InnerCata=58&DEPA=0&bop=and&description=seasonic&Order=priceD | silent power supply |
| “Ever Case 4252″:http://silentpcreview.com/article75-page2.html | “60″:http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php/masterid=647955 | |
| Total | $1715 |$1315 without monitor |

h3. Low Cost PC

This is a PC optimized with good, but not expensive components. The performance is still amazing, but the drive is the cheapest that is good enough.

| Part | Price | Comment |
| Athlon 64 2800+ | “$129″:http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php?masterid=2440485&blsrt=1 | 10% slower |
| Crucial Ballistix 3200 | “$143″:http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php/masterid=3762101 | CL2 very fast, but expensive |
| “DFI LanParty nF3 250GB”:http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2198 | “$104″:http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php/masterid=4335859 | nForce3 and 8xAGP |
| “NEC 3500A”:http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2260&p=18 | “$67″:http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php?masterid=3648375&blsrt=1 | burner |
| “Samsung Spinpoint 1614N”:http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200410/20041016SP1614C_1.html | “$85″:http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php/masterid=1224163 | quiet |
| “nVidia 6600GT”:http://anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2277 | “$220″:http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php?masterid=4927855&blsrt=1 | or a $40 Radeon 9200 if not a gamer |
| “Seasonic Silent Tornado 350″:http://silentpcreview.com/article28-page3.html | “$71″:http://www.newegg.com/app/searchProductResult.asp?Submit=Go&Range=1&InnerCata=58&DEPA=0&bop=and&description=seasonic&Order=priceD | |
| “Ever Case 4252″:http://silentpcreview.com/article75-page2.html | “60″:http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php/masterid=647955 |
| Nutech Monitor | $420 | 19″ LCD |
| Total | $1289 | Add $879 without monitor |

The list isn’t very long, but since I’m at it (and it is the holiday season), here’s a list of software that I would (and have) paid for over the last year. Amazing utility for little cost:

* “DBPowerAMP”:http://www.dbpoweramp.com/. I’ve only been using this for a short while, but it is amazing in that it allows conversion from essentially any music format to any other. You can directly go from .WAV to .FLAC or to .AAC. Also, it has the only decent bailer for the iPod so you don’t have use iTunes and synchronize your entire collection, you can take pieces of anything and just copy them over. It’s $19 for the Sveta Portable Audio (that includes their convertor) so that is probably the most amazing bargain. I still the freeware Musicmatch for editing tags (nothing is better) and Exact Audio Copy to copy CDs (because it does the filenaming better), but this is becoming indispensible.
* “Tsunami MPEG Encoder”:http://www.pegasys-inc.com/. Another utility where I paid $25, but lost the serial number. This is probably the best and cheapest MPEG-2 encoder. It does variable encoding and is very artifact free. They have a huge number of tools now, but the latest is called TMPGEnc 3.0 XPress. It is $58, but worth it if you really want to fill your DVDs.
* “SmartFTP”:http://smartftp.com. OK, I actually paid $30 for this and have never gotten the serial numbers right, so I’m technically still using it as freeware. It is the most amazing utility for those of us who use Linux sites for hosting. Super convenient and very fast (that’s a theme for this list BTW). Biggest CON is that the queue feature is very unintuitive. Very useful, but not intuitive. You basically drag the files to the queue area and then say where it goes. The opposite of drag and drop.
* “MovableType”:http://movabletype.org. Paid my $99 for an unlimited license. Still the best and most used blog platform around.