Best pc spec to buy?

[londonpete]

hello, was wondering what a decent spec these days would be on a modern pc.
Am getting so confused with speeds , gigabytes etc.
Was looking for a pc just really to download music , maybe use excel, general surfing and having a CD-RW drive as well.
What should i be looking for in terms of speed and disk space wise?
thanks!

[graftarian]

Unless you're doing lots of graphic intensive stuff like video editing, major picture editing or the latest 3D games, then a cheap PC (around 400 quid) will be more than enough. As long as you've got 100GB+ hard disk space and above 1 GHz speed, there'll be no problem.

[MTIH1992]

512MB+ or Ram
128MB+ Video Card
160GB+ For todays intensive programs, and tomorows intensive operating systems
2.6GHz+ CPU P4, Pentium D etc... (NOT A CELERON!!!!)
DVD-RW/CD-RW Combo

[MTIH1992]

To be honest, (agreeing with graftarian on this one) anything higher than 1GHz is Useable, but in todays world, unless you want to upgrade again soon, i would recomend 2.6GHz+. No Less. Dont get a celeron, and watch out for the L2 Cache. 1MB+ for the L2 Cache is good

[Gandy]

don't get bogged down with speeds, capacities etc etc. For what you want to do it's largely irrelavent.

I'd suggest getting a cheap PC as everyone else has said. If you want to do more with a PC in a couple of years then by that time you'll know exactly what kind of setup you need (and you won't realise you ever learned)

[londonpete]

Good advice all
Thanks for your help.
Now off to PC World for a spot of haggling.