Need your input!

I'm on an iMac now, and loving it. I have a Windows partition for running Windows only stuff such as the Wild Ginger software. Works for me. :) I LOVE my huge screen, and the speed...

I still have the old IBM notebook laptop for traveling, but it's very irritating after this, so I shall save up for a Macbook of some sort when I can.

I'm going for a Dell; my old one lasted about 9 years without any problems. But now the display has developed an annoying but hard to describe neon blinking effect which makes it a pain to look at (might be the graphic card...) . Therefore I'm keeping it short (getting a headache!). Need a new one anyway so... You don't run any embroidery or quilt software on yours, do you? Does Wild Ginger use a lot of MBs?

U.

It needs a bit, but I hardly notice it as the section I have the Windows installed on is way bigger than the whole laptop it was on before! And that's only a small part of my hard drive anyway...

I don't YET run any patchwork or embroidery software... :D

Ram memory is real inexpensive right now. I run 4GB on my Windows XP machine. When it comes time to upgrade I will get more I am sure.

That's the size of the Harddrive, and mostly it depends on how many applications you intend to install on the new computer. Check how much of your current harddrive you are using and get about 150% of that or as much more as you can afford. On my new everyday working computer, I have a

500Gigabyte harddrive, and another 500Gig in an external enclosure I can use for backups. On the older embrodiery-only computer I have installed a 500Gig harddrive.

"RAM" also know as "Random Access Memory". Probably a minimum of 1gigabyte, on up to whatever you can afford. My new Dell has 3.24 GB of RAM. Usually the more RAM you have, combined with a faster processor, the speedier everything will load and run.

An Intel(R) Core(TM) 2 Duo 2.8Ghz CPU on my new Dell, but my legacy computer, on which I run the embroidery machine is slower, 1.4Ghz.

Ursula, investigate the ---minimum system requirements--- for the hardware (embroidery machine) and software (digitizing application) for the machine(s) you are drooling over. Especially important, make sure the software will run on whatever OS (XP/VISTA/2000/etc) your new computer will come loaded with. Some embroidery software is old enough that it balks at the newer operating systems, or will not install at all (*see below for a work-around). The shop where you are looking at machines should be able to supply you with a list of minimum requirements.

When I bought my XL5000 in 2004, I had no clue about the software 'dongle' which required an outdated/obsolete serial port for connection. I proceeded to purchase a dedicated laptop computer, and discovered that the software/dongle needed a serial port and the computer had nothing but USB ports. I was able to locate (after much searching) a serial-to-USB converter which worked... kind of. But I finally ended up replacing the notebook with a resurrected older (2001) PC. It has an Intel 1.4GHz processor, a

500Gigabyte harddrive (plenty big enough, I am only using about 22 Gig), 1GB RAM (while more memory would be better, I can no longer find compatible SIMMs) and the OS is XP Pro Service Pack 2. It is slower then the laptop, but has the *huge* advantage of having a serial port for the null modem cable, which makes transferring designs to the SM effortless. *One solution, if the new computer comes with a whiz-bang newer OS which will not run the [embroidery software], is to partition your harddrive and create a bootable partition for a legacy OS, such as Win 98 or XP. It sounds complicated, but really it's not. In the past when I needed to install some legacy applications which refused to install under XP, I used Partition Magic to create the new partition, installed a registered copy of Win 98 in the new partition, and the older software applications installed and ran just fine. And it's very easy to boot back-and-forth between the two partitions.

On the new Dell Inspiron 530 desktop I bought last year, I paid a $20 "downgrade" in order to have it come pre-loaded with XP PRO Service Pack 3. I wanted nothing to do with Vista, but Dell may no longer offer that choice.

HTH,

They sell them with Windows 7 only now, and as far as I've heard, that one works pretty well. If they's tried to sell me Vista, I'd have paid for a downgrade, too. Actually, Vista was one of the reasons I postponed getting a new computer for so long. And good it was, now I can get the right stuff for all my new discovered hobbies. ;-)

Beverly, your input helped a lot! I'll make them include a null modem port!

U. - writing her wishlist and then making a phonecall.

You may want to hang on to that older computer. :-} I use my new computer for most applications, e-mail, and the internet, but my older one is set up for my embroidery machine. I do have all three computers on a LAN, so I'm able to swap files easily when I need to.

I have never used Win 7, do try to find out from the sewing machine people whether your machine and software will run under it.

I doubt very much Dell will offer a serial port/null modem port, that technology went out several years ago as USB became the default. If the software you plan to run requires it, you'll probably have to find a USB-to-serial adaptor like:

However, I strongly suggest that you try to find them locally. It took me four tries before I found one which worked with my software/dongle, and I had to return the first three.

Good luck!