Computer Specs

[Driven03]

...for an office machine. It will run mostly Microsft Office 2000 (Excel, etc...). What kind of specs do you think an office computer should have? **It needs to be something that will last for a while. Not be out of date by next month.** Processor, Memory, Etc...

 

[Ryan]

Get something with a Duron 850

 

[Ryan]

Get something with a Duron 850

 

[hifimaster]

You should get at least an 800mhz cpu,128MB ram,and windows 2000.

 

[erub]

I'm going to overkill this machine for what's currently out there, trying to go for the best price/performance ratio, and assume your willing to spend around a grand w/o monitor:

Athlon T-bird 1 GHz - $200 - who can resist saying that have a 1 GHz chip?!
KT133A Motherboard w/ onboard sound - $150 - many threads on this topic, I don't have a personal preference - Abit, Asus, MSI, Iwill
256 MB PC133 RAM from Crucial - $100
ATI Radeon 32 MB DDR - $100
45 GB IBM 75GXP - $150
Netgear FA311TX/modem - $25
Asus 50X CDROM - $50
Intellimouse Optical - $50
Speakers - $25

Total: $850 + monitor - make sure you get a nice monitor, 19" seems to be the standard for performance machines these days

Definitely Windows 2000 Professional, with no substitues.

 

[Driven03]

Thanks a bunch guys!

Any other suggestions are appreciated.

 

[ChipNOW]

Single Pentium III 866 on a Dual Apollo 266 board (Iwill make one)
256MB PC1600 DDR SDRAM (Real good buy, even if it is slower than 2100)
30GB IBM ATA100 HDD (or 2x 20GB IBM on RAID 1 if it's critical data)
Matrox Millienium G450 32MB
Decent 17" Monitor (take your pick, Sony G200 should have price drops soon)
Windows 2000 Pro

That's what I'd suggest. The reason I suggest the dual board is that you want longevity - adding a second processor in the future gives you just that.
If your data is mission critical consider RAID 1. This takes separate images of your data, so if one drive fails, the other maintains all the data.
As for the RAM, that's around $92 for 256MB Crucial... damn good

My $0.02