Hardware needed

I am tired of backing up my dvds on my laptop, its slow and I have to have an external dvd burner. I need a desktop, but I don't know what I need, I can afford a $200-$350 computer but I still need to know what processor speed, Processor type, RAM, and all that so it can be fast but in my prize range. It takes my laptop 25-45 min to decrypt, then about 1 hour 45 min - 2 hours 45 min to encode, then to burn it takes about 2 hours and 45 min. That's got to be 5 hours for the whole process, I don't know if that's OK or if I can do better, but my problem now is money for speed and quality, don't know if I can do that......Hope you guys can help!

 

That burn process is horrifyingly long. I don't backup DVDs very often so I can't be sure how long it takes, but to give you an idea, a cheap 16x DVD burner these days can write a full disc in around 4 minutes, and a dual layer disc in around 15-20.
As for the encoding time, it depends what you use and what spec your current PC is. As for the PC, if you can find a cheap Athlon64 X2 dual core system you'd be good for encoding, they're pretty rapid.

 

go to your local pc shop (big one like pc world) and ask about their refurbished base units

had two customers now who have got absolute bargains from pcworld they cannot sell returns as new so they sell them as refurbished but they don't advertise it ( not so much profit i guess)

 

Also try for ex-display models, I got £100 off my old PC by doing that.

 

I have a Dell latitude cpx, Pentium 3 640mhz, 512mb of ram, its a laptop. And I just bought a HP/COMPAQ COMPUTER SR1750KR P4 3GHz 256MB 200GB DVD±RW for $200, hope that is good enough to do all my dvd burning and video and audio editing and also that I didn't pay too much for it, it was an ebay item and it was ending soon so I just went for it.

What do you guys think?

 

It's a bit late to ask us if you've already bought it!
The hard disk is fine, perhaps you could see what speed the DVD drive is, the figures I quoted earlier were for 16x DVD and 5x Dual Layer.
However, for video editing the 256MB of memory is going to suck badly. I wouldn't suggest doing much video work on it unless you give it more memory.

 

I know it is too late to ask, just wanted to make sure it was at least an OK deal and good enough for what I need, my laptop was $75, bought it from a friend but I think the desktop is going to be much faster than my laptop. I don't know the speed that the DVD±RW on the new one is, but I am going to install my sony dual dvd burner, the external one here's a link for it, http://prices.cnet.co.uk/0,39100483,24699542,00.htm .

I got caught bidding on the new PC without thinking about maybe getting an Athlon64 X2 dual core system, DAMN!! Like I said hope I got a good deal for it anyways and that is good enough for what I need it for.

 

That DVD burner is 16x Single layer (3 1/2 minutes to burn one disc)
and 4x Dual Layer (27 minutes to burn one disc)
The processor's acceptable for DVD encodes, but not the memory. In truth, $200 was a lot to pay for that system, especially for ebay.

 

I will max the ram, hope I can fit more than 512mb, I saw the same model computer on a couple of websites, refurbished, going for $300+ so I thought to myself "you gotta get the one on ebay fast its $100 less" All in all my new one should be faster than my laptop right, I think I can kill at least 4hours from the process.

 

Being able to burn DVDs in 4 minutes rather than an hour (I'm at a loss as to how it can take more than an hour, that's less than 1x, unless of course the processor was so slow it couldn't keep burning at 1x and had to rely on underrun protection). Actually, thinking about it, that's probably the case. I reckon you can get the whole process down from 5 1/2 hours to around 45-50 minutes.