Multimedia Dream Machine

You're the person who brings a digital camera along to every birthday, reunion, and dinner party. You then spend your precious weekend hours painstakingly removing red-eye, unsightly telephone poles, even double chins from the photos you've taken. By Monday morning, they're sparkling and ready to be e-mailed to friends and family or posted for viewing on your Web site. Or maybe you're the type who runs around with a camcorder, dreaming of creating the next Memento from your basement. Whether you're an old hand or a recent convert to the digital multimedia explosion, you have at least once edited a still image or a digital video and converted a VHS tape to a digital format. Sound is of equal importance, for your video editing as well as your MP3s; you have enough of those to warrant your own radio station.

The multimedia maven is in you. Here's the perfect system to satisfy your creative side.

Features:

Windows XP Pro. Even though the PC may be used at home, we recommend Win XP Pro over Win XP Home. Win XP Pro provides password-protected local file-access control, as well as Remote Desktop, Encrypting File System, Roaming Profiles, SNMP, and Network Monitor.

The Sony DRU-500AX DVD±RW drive and a CD-RW drive (for copying directly from disc to disc). This gives you flexibility in writable DVD media, so you can create DVDs that are playable in consumer DVD players. The Sony unit is currently the only drive that supports both DVD and DVD-RW.

A 21-inch or larger CRT. This is a must. Add a 15-inch XGA (1,024-by-768) LCD for toolbars and palettes if you are a true multimedia/graphics enthusiast.

A 3-GHz Pentium 4 or better. Many multimedia applications, such as Adobe Photoshop, Windows Media Encoder, and 3ds max, are optimized to work with the P4. Hyper-Threading, found on the 3-GHz and 3.06-GHz P4, can also benefit users who run an antivirus program while rendering graphics in the background, for example.

A Wacom tablet for precise photo retouching.

A wired keyboard, preferably with customizable keys.

An optical mouse.

At least six USB 2.0 and two FireWire ports (four USB and one FireWire on the front panel), plus an NTSC output. A card reader that supports CompactFlash, Memory Stick, MultiMediaCard, Secure Digital, SmartMedia, and xD formats on the front panel is a plus for digital camera buffs.

Two Seagate Barracuda 120GB 7,200-rpm SATA V hard drives in a RAID 0 configuration. RAID 0 effectively doubles hard drive throughput, giving you much faster access as well as faster load and save times for applications and large files. And 7,200-rpm drives are more useful when you are editing and saving graphics.

The ATI Radeon 9500 Pro, nVidia GeForce4 Ti 4200, or Matrox Parhelia, all with 128MB of graphics memory. 3-D performance is not as important to 2-D functions like photos and video editing. Save a little money with one of these cards over a top-of-the-line card (such as the nVidia GeForce FX 5800 Ultra or the ATI Radeon 9800 Pro). All three support dual monitors, and the Matrox Parhelia supports three simultaneous displays.

2GB of DDR400 SDRAM. DDR400 is the fastest memory currently available, and to work with huge video files you'll need 2GB.

The Intel 875P chipset. The newest Intel chipset has a fast 800-MHz front-side bus, dual-channel DDR 400 RAM, integrated SATA RAID, and 8X AGP. Dual-channel DDR doubles the memory bandwidth, and SATA RAID effectively doubles hard drive throughput.

Integrated 10/100/1,000 Ethernet for wired connectivity (LAN or broadband).

The Klipsch ProMedia 2.1 Star Wars Limited Edition speakers or any quality speakers with a subwoofer.

The Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy 2 sound card or integrated 5.1-channel audio on the 875P chipset. The Audigy 2 has an abundance of input/output ports, which are useful for connecting external speakers, an MP3 player, microphones, a MiniDisc player, or other audio devices.

Perfect Add-Ons:

For on-the-spot printing, a photo printer, such as the Canon S900 Color Bubble Jet Printer.

Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0 ($99 list). This is a must-have program for the photographer who has outgrown basic digital image-editing programs but doesn't need the advanced features in higher-end professional programs such as Adobe Photoshop 7.0 ($609).

Pinnacle Studio 8 ($99 list). This is the perfect video application for the perfect multimedia PC. Videography is a challenging hobby, but Pinnacle Studio includes strong features and smart tools for capturing an audience with entertaining videos.