Computer to design, rip and print

[flat rock stan]

I will be getting my Roland XC 540 next week and have more work lined out than I know how to design! This week I want to go to my favorite store (Fry’s Electronics) and buy a machine that will handle the work for printing van wraps. The Fry’s pre-built is within my price range but I thought I would ask you guys what you think about necessary and unnecessary bells and whistles I might look for. I was kind of looking last time I was there and the machine on display only had 2 gig ram but I have heard 4 would suite my needs better. Suggestions anyone?
Thanks in advance
Stan
www.autowindowtinting.com (http://www.autowindowtinting.com/)
:design: watch out here I come! :Big Laugh

[BobbyFosson]

2gb will work but I do run 4gb in all of my demo pc's that run my Roland printers.

Intel P4 or Duo 2 Processor (Do not recommend Celeron or AMD)

160gb HDD or more

Internal wired nic

OS - XP Pro or Vista Business (NO XP MEDIA Center)

my 2 cents

[ChicagoGraphics]

The more ram you have the smoother things will go with printing & designing.
4 gig ram is the normal.
We use 16GB ram,2- 500gb HDD in our one cpu just for printing no designing, all other cpu 8GB, all using XP-Pro.
I heard alot of gliches in Vista Business, I'd stay away from it

[GraphixCALC]

Wow, I didn't think that the OS would recognize that much RAM...I thought it was limited to something like 4GB or so (for XP anyway)...that's good to know!!!

[Techman]

if your RAM exceeds 2GB, the excess amount will be used only by Windows kernel.

Windows XP Professional and Windows Server 2003 Memory Support. The maximum amount of memory that can be supported on Windows XP Professional and Windows Server 2003 is also 4 GB.
That means you cant use it if you install more than 4GB RAM when you are using Windows XP. Even if you do, there is no way to get the OS to recognize more than 4GB. On the other hand Windows XP 64 bit supports 128 GB of RAM without any switches.

32-bit OS's will alost never be able to support more than 4GB of RAM, because, that's the maximum limit for a 32-bit processor

I would like to see the tweaks that will let a BIOS show more than 4 gigs. I could be done bu ti would be curious how the 32 bit liits are ovecome. Teh laws of matmatics must be bent somehow.

[GraphixCALC]

So, ChicagoGraphics, how are you using 4GB, 8GB and 16GB of RAM on your XP Pro machines..are you running 64-bit?

[Replicator]

I was under the impression that even with 4GB of ram the computer

only recognizes about 2.86GB or some horse$h!t like that . . . !

Techman ?

[Techman]

yes, the actual true usable number is around 3 gigs. To the best of my knowledge. But, this hair splitting is in the realm of super tweakers.
And those who have the power to rewrite the laws of physics.

[flat rock stan]

Guess it's 4 gig for me! Great info to have and I can impress friends with the knowledge.
thanks
Stan

[ChicagoGraphics]

Yes windows XP 64 bit, but my other cpu's are 32s and I have 8 gigs of ram in each.