Which computer?

[J Wilson]

I'm involved with a small uk charity. We want to buy a pc for use with
publisher. A laptop may be useful as it could be passed around the
volunteers who produce our newsletter.

We don't have a huge amount of money and I don't want to waste it
buying the wrong pc. I've looked at the minimum system requirements on
the ms site but I wondered if anyone could give me any recommendations
for features / specifications that I should look for. Is 128 mb ram
realistically enough? Would a bottom of the range laptop have a decent
enough screen?

FYI, the newsletter is about 24 pages of black and white A4 and
includes quite a few images.

Appologies if this is covered in a faq - if so, please could you
direct me to it.

Many thanks

Jenny

 

[JoAnn Paules [MSFT MVP]]

What you will get in response to this post is a lot of personal opinions
from people you don't know. What you need to do is to really talk to someone
in the field. I'm not talking about emailing a cyber person. I mean look
them in the eyes and discuss this with them. Explain what you want to do
with the system. What's important, what isn't. And if you feel any
misgivings or any pressure - RUN.

You've seen the specs on Publisher - EXCEED THEM. And 128 isn't enough. You
probably can't even buy a new computer with that little RAM these days.

 

[Erika]

Is 128 mb ram
realistically enough? Would a bottom of the range laptop have a decent
enough screen?

My computer (now 4 years old) has 512 megs ram and I wish I had more.
Memory is cheap now. Get all you can. Publisher sucks up memory and the
files are large.

 

[Ed Bennett]

We don't have a huge amount of money and I don't want to waste it
buying the wrong pc. I've looked at the minimum system requirements on
the ms site but I wondered if anyone could give me any recommendations
for features / specifications that I should look for. Is 128 mb ram
realistically enough? Would a bottom of the range laptop have a decent
enough screen?

256MB RAM is a bare minimum to run Windows XP at an acceptable speed.
To run Publisher I'd recommend getting 512MB or more of RAM.

You will want a hard drive large enough for all the photos and other content
you will be using and fast enough for the work you'll be doing (7200rpm and
ATA133 are minimum requirements on a desktop machine, but proably not on a
notebook machine as they tend to be prohibitively expensive), and you will
want some kind of removeable optical media (CD-R or DVDR) to back up your
files and take them to the printer's.

You will want as large a screen as you can lay your hands on, as large
screens make DTP work easier and more pleasurable.

You might want to look at www.novatech.co.uk for some PC or notebook deals.

 

[Paul]

I'm involved with a small uk charity. We want to buy a pc for use with
publisher. A laptop may be useful as it could be passed around the
volunteers who produce our newsletter.

We don't have a huge amount of money and I don't want to waste it
buying the wrong pc. I've looked at the minimum system requirements on
the ms site but I wondered if anyone could give me any recommendations
for features / specifications that I should look for. Is 128 mb ram
realistically enough? Would a bottom of the range laptop have a decent
enough screen?

FYI, the newsletter is about 24 pages of black and white A4 and
includes quite a few images.

Appologies if this is covered in a faq - if so, please could you
direct me to it.

I don't know what Microsft's minimum specification is for your version
of Publisher. Generally though, Microsoft's minimum specifications
for programs and/or operating systems are *very* conservative. Look
to exceed them by a long way - especially memory.