Tag Archives: Microsoft Windows Media Software

I blog, therefore I am.  I also podcast, “Photoshop” images, and edit video.  Yeah I know, I’m no René Descartes.  And thank goodness I don’t have to be in order to capture the attention of people Googling for assistance that my business can help them with.  That’s why millions of business-minded people are diving head first into using words, pictures, videos, animated characters, and even virtual worlds.  Because the more creative you are with delivering your messages, the greater chance you have to begin conversations that lead to lasting business relationships. Now that I’m really getting heavily into creating and editing all kinds of content,  I recently upgraded from my five-year-old desktop.  I needed a machine that made it painless to run things like Adobe’s Creative Suite of tools, which includes Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, Flash, etc.  I also needed to transfer video from my camera into the computer.  Plus I wanted to be able to create online demos quickly and easily. But like a growing number of business people these days, I was on a budget.       Here are a few things you may want to consider if you’re in need of a solid content-creating machine in the ball park of $1,500: Processor — going quad core A lot of people still are on the fence about which kind of processor to get.  The big choice seems to be between the dual core processors versus the quad core processors.  Keeping this at a high level, the quad-core chips have four processor cores in them, compared to the two in a dual core.  Generally speaking, dual core processors are less expensive, but perform on par if not better than quads for many basic functions. This is because there still aren’t a great deal of applications created to fully take advantage of the quad’s architecture.  But one area where quads do seem to measurably outperform duals is video editing.  So if you plan on using the Adobe tools mentioned above, as well as something like Microsoft Windows Media Encoder, you may want to make sure your next PC has a quad core processor.  There are many to choose from, and some models just got a lot cheaper as Intel recently slashed prices on two of their popular quad processors — the QX6700 or the less expensive QX6600 I opted for. Memory – get as much as you can Even the most novice of PC users know that the more memory you have the better.  And memory can be pretty expensive.  But if you’re planning to run Microsoft Vista, do yourself a favor and get at least 4GB of DDR2 of memory, as I did. You can get by with less, but this will allow you to simultaneously run all sorts of applications without a real hiccup.  Particularly if you want to run the kind of apps for creating multimedia content. Graphics card – see results in fast-loading and crisp images The graphics card can make a difference between having a good setup and a great setup that renders crisp images, lightning fast.  You can also spend as much on a graphics card as you can on the other parts of your machine — combined.  But even on a strict budget of $1,500 for the whole PC, you can get a great graphics card like the Nvidia GeForce 8800GT.  Without going into great detail, this card packs a wallop while costing a great deal less than other cards in its class. It’s power efficient and runs pretty quiet, which is great when you’re recording audio.  I went with the model that has 512MB of memory, but for a few bucks less you can drop down to the 256MB model.  Firewire – a necessity these days Since I’m planning to use a lot of video to grab people’s attention on the Web, it’s important to have a way to transfer the video to my new PC from my Sony HDR-HC9 MiniDV HandyCam.  And the best way to do this is through a Firewire port.  Most new PCs and laptops come with this port, but you’ll just want to make sure you have it.  Although USB 2.0 ports can transfer data at high rates, Firewire can sustain high transfer rates more reliably because of its architecture.  The bottom line here is that frames typically won’t be dropped when video is transferred from a camera to the PC.  USB ports have been known to drop frames, which isn’t good if you’re transferring large videos you plan on editing.  I can also plug in my Mackie Onyx 1220 mixer to record near-studio quality level conversations for my podcast.  Other pieces to the pie With all the content you’ll be creating you’re going to need a big hard drive to store it all.  I went with a 750GB hard drive, but you should be able to make due with 500GB.  And make sure your PC has room to grow as you’ll probably want to add a second internal hard drive strictly for storing content.  In fact you may want to pick up an external Firewire hard drive that you can carry around if you plan on using multiple machines to work on.  Another key component is the monitor.  If you plan on having a lot of applications open at the same time, do yourself a favor and get the biggest one you can afford.  It makes a big difference in productivity when you’re editing video while answering emails and shooting out blog posts.  I’m already wishing I went with the 30 inch wide screen instead of the 22 inch model.  But I still may double up later on and go with the duel monitor setup! All things considered, I’ve been extremely happy with the computer I put together for $1,600 (yeah, I went a bit over budget.).  I ended up buying the HP Pavillion d4999t with all the above components.  In fact, I think I’m all set for the foreseeable future.  Now all I have to do is let those creative juices flow. Brent Leary is a small business  technology analyst, advisor, speaker and award winning blogger.  He’s the host of “Technology… for Business $ake”, a weekly radio program on BusinessTechnologyRadio.   His popular blog can be found at brentleary.com.