zkaudio

lol you just missed a 4060 on ebay today for under 500 bux.!

lee, for some reason the songs won't play! weird

your preference for intel is not a good one in this case, the dual core intels have been outbenchmarked left and right by amd... despite their higher transistor count. that said, whichever you go with, I'd stay away from dual processor setups if you aren't computer saavy. The dual core chips will suit you just fine. Make sure, however, that you don't pay extra for "hyperthreading" as most audio apps don't like it. From my understanding, the dual core is especially effecting with DAW's due to the need for processing power from the plugins and host at the same time... this way each gets its own cache to draw from.

unless you are goign to get teh quad core powermac that's out there right now... don't waste your time... i have EONS of computer engineering experience.. the current crop of amd chips will dessimate just about any mac (save the one mentioned above) Just remember, you are facing a company wide platform change in the near future. Once ALL the new apples are on Intel chips, the software for the powerpc chip will take a backseat.

I would go up from teh 4200 to at least the 4400 athlon x2. The 4200 and lower only have dual 512k caches I believe while the chips above this have a higher bus speed and dual 1mb caches... important specs for mixing.

either go dell 30" or apple cinema hd 30"... widescreens suck for almost everything except for AUDIO APPS/MIXING. I have 2 widescreen 20" at work and the resolution is a bit stretched. For what I do(accountant), square is better. My work is usually layed out print friendly, which by default is vertically... I can't think of one recording app that doesn't use horizontal time orientation