Okay, a big dilemma for me. With some freelance software development job I did recently, I earned quite a nice amount to add on my savings account. :D But I don't want to save it all. I think it's time to consider buying a new computer and I think that with up to four thousands Euro, I can buy a pretty decent system. (I've earned more tan this, though. It's just the maximum limit that I want to spend on a computer.)
My old Intel Pentium III system at 800 MHz is still doing fine, it's just not very fast compared to what is available.
Now, since my interests is mostly in software development. I am using Delphi 2005 or Delphi 7 most of the time. I also do a bit of web development too, and in general most of what I am experimenting with is related to processing data. It varies a bit, depending on what I am interested in at a certain moment. I've written my own mailreader once, created some ASP site that resizes images with a webservice linked to it too and have done all kinds of interesting small projects.
I do admit to play games on my PC once in a while too, but not that regular anyways.
Now, my knowledge about hardware is a bit limited. Building my own PC is therefore no option. will just have to go to a local shop and tell them what I want, then see if what they can offer me is satifying enough.
The processor should be an extremely fast Pentium IV thingie, maybe even two. (Intel, since I dislike the other brand.) And then of course lots of RAM. About 2 GB or more. A large harddisk, although I would prefer speed over size in this case. And of course a lot of USB ports since I have quite a few USB devices. A good graphics card too, although since I'm not a gamer I can do with just an average good-quality card here. (I do want a very high resolution like 1600x1200 or better, though.)
So what would my options be for this amount of cash? Would it be enough? Or should I perhaps wait a few more months for the next Intel processor and Windows Vista? Are there things I should think about? The disk for example, SCSI, IDE or whatever? Maybe something additional to it?
Oh, well... I'm going to wait a few weeks before making this decision so until that time, any nice hints and tips would be welcome.
(I might be a genius with software, the hardware part is still mostly unknown territories for me...)