Black Bart Loc: Indiana

When I hit the lottery I may consider a Mac but not until then.

shall1585 Loc: Prichard, WV

It hasn't been used for about the last 7 or 8... LOL It was too slow and had issues...

shall1585 Loc: Prichard, WV

I love my Apple products, I have an iPhone and an iPad mini, so the next logical thing was a Mac, BUT, I would have to repurchase PSE, and the only way I was able to get it to begin with was the sale that everyone had in November/December, plus I had gotten $20 in e-gift cards from walmart when I bought some of my little girls Christmas presents, I ended up only having $30 in it. I've been using the LR trial and really like it too, so I do plan to buy it as well since I can get a student discount, but I really don't want to have to buy PSE again, let alone at full price.

cheineck Loc: Hobe Sound, FL

iMac!!!!

GilroyGal Loc: Greater Monterey Bay Area (CA)

Don't buy a Dell in the store; order it online directly from Dell. You can then custom fit it to your specific requirements. They then run a final test to make sure that everything works, and ship it out to FED-EX. I've bought 2 Dell desktops and 3 Dell laptops (gifts), and never a problem. Also buy their support. User reviews show they shipped a new laptop somewhere in East Asia when problems did occur.
Support is excellent and very friendly and professional. And because I am such a "good" customer, last time they gave me a 5% discount (or was it 10% ??).
Try the online order; as you add more features, the total rises higher. Thus, there is NO under-the-table smoke and mirrors as from other snake-oil salesmen.

Wellhiem Loc: Sunny England.

I bought my Compaq about three years ago from Staples. On the one occasion I had a problem I called the Staples help line. They were great.

llindstrand Loc: Seattle Metro

[quote=shall1585]Hey everyone! I'm looking to buy a new desktop in the next few weeks, but it's been so long since I've bought one that I just don't know what brand to get.

I just went through the same challenge. The last three computers that I had were bought through and built by a computer shop. I had reasonable luck with them but all died at about the end of 5 years. I debated heavily about going the same way, also building it myself and then HP came put with a special that I couldn't buy the same components for their price assembled. I bought a Envy Phoenix model 810 which by itself fills your price range. I already had a good monitor. You could easily get by with the next level down as it doesn't sound like you are doing the heavy software and image processing that I do. The new one is working great and I am very happy with it.
Swede

MsLala Loc: Kingston, NY

I was a teacher for over ten years and have dealt with Dell and Gateway. Both brands gave us nothing but trouble, especially after the warranties started running out. I've two Apples, the latest an Apple MacBook Air and my previous one my mother now has and loves. I personally love Apple but I don't know the specs on their desktop. If I were buying a new desktop I would definitely follow the advice of others and purchase one built for you. There is so much you could add and leave out than if you go and buy one off the shelf. Just my humble opinion. Good luck with your search and new machine which ever you decide.
Laura

Murray Loc: New Westminster

Have had Dell (laptop & desktop) in my offices for at least 10 years... Nary a problem so far.

SHUTERED Loc: SO. CAL.

I recently bought a Dell XPS 8700 w/ win8. Love it. As far as service goes, if you have a new XPS machine you get special treatment through their service dept. All the tech.s are home grown. Oh, the mother board can take up 32 giga bytes of ram. At this time I am running 12.

singleviking Loc: Lake Sebu Eco Park, Philippines

Well, for $1200 to $1500 you should be able to have a really great desktop machine. I broke down the deals on 2 systems presently available for you, but you need to find a good tech to put it together for you for about $100 assembly fee and add in the cost of about $80 for MS Windows 7 or 8 64 bit. Personally, I recommend the WIN7-64 PRO for about $100.

I did 2 systems here. One is INTEL and the other is AMD. I also added in a reasonable 1Gig video card and 8Gig of system PC1600 RAM. You can pick up a good new 24" IPS LED monitor for around $250 from DELL or ASUS. You could spend less on a monitor but make sure that it's an IPS LED unit.
For the motherboard, I seriously recommend the ASUS SABERTOOTH line for either INTEL or AMD since they have the only 5 year warranty in the business.
Also, I put a 120Gig SSD in for really fast Bootup of the OS since they're really cheap now.

INTEL System (Quad Core):
INTEL i5-4570 $ 190
CPU Fan $ 30
Power Supply EVGA NEX 750 $ 110
ASUS SABERTOOTH Z-87 MOBO $ 230
Video Card EVGA 01G-P4-2650KR w/1Gig ddr $ 113
(and this has a $20 rebate to be even cheaper)
8 Gig RAM (2 x 4G) Crucial Ballistic Sport $ 65
Seagate Hybrid 1 TB $ 90
120 Gig Kingston V300 SSD $ 90
Case Corsair ATX mid tower (Metal construction) $ 80
BlueRay/DVD $50 ______________________________________________
Total parts cost after rebates $ 1013.


AMD System (HEX CORE):
AMD FX-6350 (6 core CPU) AM3+ $ 130
CPU Fan $ 30
EVGA NEX 750 Power Supply $ 80
(With $30 rebate)
EVGA 1Gig Video card (01G-P4-2650KR) $ 93
(with $20 rebate)
ASUS SABERTOOTH 990FX-R2 motherboard $ 175
8Gig Crucial Ballistic Sport RAM $ 65
SEAGATE Hybrid 1 TB HDD $ 95
Kingston V300 SSD 120 Gig $ 90
Corsair all metal mid tower case $ 80
BlueRay/DVD $50
____________________________________________
Total system parts cost $ 1000

Both systems will require $100 assembly and OS installation fee.
Using either WIN7-64 or WIN8 will allow for up to 32 Gig of future RAM expansion. All MOBOs have only 4 RAM module slots except for the really high-end GAMER motherboards which have 8 RAM slots.

Prices are from today's NewEgg listings and sales but you can also go to TigerDirect.

ASUS SABERTOOTH line MOBO is the only one available with a 5 year WARRANTY. ASUS also has their customer support located in the USA so you can understand them easily. LOL. They are also very helpful and accommodating.

Either of these systems will give you a super fast and reliable system for years. Typical BigBox companies use minimum power supply sizes so future expansion may be limited for upgrades and use Intel integrated graphics which is a real system RAM robber. They also use slower RAM and the cheapest HDD they can buy.

Hope this helps you and you have a local computer geek to help assemble your system.

shall1585 Loc: Prichard, WV

I was looking at the 8700. Thanks for the review!

shall1585 Loc: Prichard, WV

Wow! Thank you so much for taking the time to put all this together for me! I figure I could find someone to put it together, but if not, I'm fairly confident that I could do it. My mom built one about 12 years ago. I had no idea that the SSD drives were so inexpensive! I had never heard of them until I started looking at computer reviews, and checking on here to see what people had. When I would see a "big box" computer company add one in, it was always like 32GB and it added A LOT to the price!

Frank47 Loc: West coast Florida

About a year ago, I bought a Dell at Costco for about $900 at the time excluding monitor. I had my own 24" monitor to use. 16 gig RAM, intel i7 chip, and 2 terabytes hard drive. I also use Photomatix Pro, Elements 12, and LR 5 with absolute ease. I often have multiple images open with no issues. Costco also gives you a second year of warranty as part of the deal. My only real advice is buy as much machine as you can afford. Software and image file size continues to grow and you don't want to be "shopping" again any time soon!

warrior Loc: Paso Robles CA

Check out Dell Studio XPS with 25 inch monitor.