PC Choice

The HP m9200t will run PS CS3 and LR just fine, assuming the CPU, RAM, and GPU have not been abused or overworked. If you are tech savvy, you could overclock the CPU and cool that puppy with coolant (the same type you use in car), and it will be almost as close as to the HP p6580t (not similar but close in terms of image processing), depending on how you do your image processing. The key is to take advantage of all cores and multi-threading.

If you do raw conversion and some basic editing during post processing of 500 images or less per session. The Q9300 is more than enough for your needs. The i7 would be overkill for an average user. Don't worry about the graphic card at this point. Even though a good graphic card does help a bit in photoshop, it still takes a lot of tweaking in the photoshop department to take advantage of all the graphic card has to offer (Adobe, are you listening?). Avoid gaming graphic card though, but look at good CAD graphic card for image processing.

For $250 (assuming everything is still in good sane working condition - no smoke, no funny smell, no click clack sound, the m9200t is a good deal!

Hope this help a little

Canon10D wrote in post #11650593
The HP m9200t will run PS CS3 and LR just fine, assuming the CPU, RAM, and GPU have not been abused or overworked.

Those components tend to work, or not, there's not really an in between where they work slowly. Hard disks and fans are the only moving parts, they can degrade, though hard disks only sometimes show signs before they fail. Sometimes they just stop working.

BeritOlam wrote in post #11650219
A few cents worth consideration....

(1) Is it running Windows 7 or Vista? It looks like the original version came running Vista in 2008...so the immediate question that came to mind is, "Is this computer upgradable to Windows 7"? And it sounds like it is upgradable....so good news there.

As someone that has seen more than his share of hosed Vista computers.....I wouldn't touch this older HP unless I was planning to upgrade to Windows 7. Of course, it's possible the owner has already done so, but I'm guessing at that price....probably not!

(2) The hardware performance will be fine at that price....but the main things to look out for are going to be (a) the hard drive and (b) the power supply. You're likely dealing with 2+ year old parts, which is fine for things like memory. But an HDD at this age could start to falter on you within the next year. And HP doesn't particularly make good power supplies -- in fact, I just swapped one out on a 2008 HP about 2 months ago for a friend!

Speaking for myself....unless I were really cash strapped, I think I'd opt for the i7 option, primarily because I'd be more confident that it would last longer. Of course, we're playing the 'law of averages' here, and your buddy's Quad core system could prove to be a steal, if parts don't conk out on you in the next couple of years.

Even if that were the case, an i7 system could go into $800+. If he were to replace a HDD and PSU, a good 640GB-1TB system drive can be had for ~$50, and a high quality 350W PSU can be had for ~$40 (he's not running a gaming setup, so he doesn't really need much power). That goes to about $350 for the total price, which is still pretty cheap.

r31ncarnat3d wrote in post #11652824
Even if that were the case, an i7 system could go into $800+. If he were to replace a HDD and PSU, a good 640GB-1TB system drive can be had for ~$50, and a high quality 350W PSU can be had for ~$40 (he's not running a gaming setup, so he doesn't really need much power). That goes to about $350 for the total price, which is still pretty cheap.

I agree....

Thank you all for helping me. My friend was cleaning the HD yesterday and the PC will ready to hand to me tomorrow. I can't wait. I will do a fresh install of Win7 on it. I will update after it all up and running.
Many thanks again!!!

Update for the exact spec.
HP Elite m9200t
Intel G33 Express chipset
ASUS: IPIBL-LB Mobo
Core 2 Quad Q9300 (Y) (2.5GHz /1333 MHz) 6 MB L2 cache; Duo Core (95W)
500 (x2) GB 7200 rpm SATA 3G (3.0 Gb/sec) Harddrives
6 GB (2 x 2 GB, 2 x 1 GB) DDR2 PC2-6400 Memory
350W Power Supply
GeForce 8800 GT Video card
PCI Express x1 TV tuner card & TV tuner card with FM tuner (includes remote control & receiver)
16X DVD(+/-)R/RW 12X RAM (+/-)R DL LightScribe SATA
Wireless LAN 802.11 b/g (internal USB wireless)
15-in-1 (4 slot/USB 2.0) + IR Receiver + 2 USB + 1 1394 + Aud L-R + S-Video + Comp Video + Audio (headphone and microphone)
7.1 capable sound with front audio ports (integrated)

My friend was kind enough to even thrown in the Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit. I didn't get to play with it much but so far it is awesome. I will see if I like Vista enough to keep it or replace it with Win7.

Please let me know how bad is Vista and how is it compare to Win7.
Thanks.

Vista was slower for me than Windows 7 was, and I've found the UI of W7 to be much nicer and easier. Vista also annoyed me with the User Account Control popups. If you can get over it though, it's no big deal.

And that's a pretty good setup for $250. I'd definitely take it. If worst comes to worst and you decide you hate Vista, you could always upgrade W7. Even then it'd still be a bargain PC.

Thanks for the info r31nca....!
I already dislike how Vista does not has the option of single mouse click. Double clicks are too much for the amount of clickings that I do

Your rig looks great....now you need to make sure that the page file is in a clean, unused partition on the non-OS drive (12gb in case you swap the two 1gb DIMMS for 2gb DIMMS for a total of 8gb Ram) ...and create aNOTHER partition on that drive (making 3 on the non-OS drive) for the PS scratch disk (20-30gb should be plenty for most typical use)...enjoy

Why would one create additional partitions for scratch but not an actual separate disk. The only thing you're changing is addition layer of address interpolation, but not reducing the amount of thrasing the disk will experience.

Putting your page on another disk makes sense, but partitioning won't help your performance.

Wow...Kitacanon and Sp1207
These are completely difference language to me . Please help me with a bit more details of what they are and what they do so that I can search for way to get it done. Thanks again for your help!

kitacanon wrote in post #11666787
Your rig looks great....now you need to make sure that the page file is in a clean, unused partition on the non-OS drive (12gb in case you swap the two 1gb DIMMS for 2gb DIMMS for a total of 8gb Ram) ...and create aNOTHER partition on that drive (making 3 on the non-OS drive) for the PS scratch disk (20-30gb should be plenty for most typical use)...enjoy

Sp1207 wrote in post #11667666
Why would one create additional partitions for scratch but not an actual separate disk. The only thing you're changing is addition layer of address interpolation, but not reducing the amount of thrasing the disk will experience.

Putting your page on another disk makes sense, but partitioning won't help your performance.

Sp1207 wrote in post #11667666
Why would one create additional partitions for scratch but not an actual separate disk. The only thing you're changing is addition layer of address interpolation, but not reducing the amount of thrasing the disk will experience.

Putting your page on another disk makes sense, but partitioning won't help your performance.

Partitioning the page file keeps it free of fragmenting...doesn't it?

Tigerkn wrote in post #11667703
Wow...Kitacanon and Sp1207
These are completely difference language to me . Please help me with a bit more details of what they are and what they do so that I can search for way to get it done. Thanks again for your help!

Having a separate HDD is a way of making sure that if you get a virus and have to reformat the OS drive you will not lose your photo/data files.

A partition is a way of dividing a hard drive into "chapters" if you will, each working independently of the others...

I may be wrong (and Sp1207 may know more and can explain) but I think that by partitioning the HD and keeping the page file (that's virtual memory used by the OS when it runs out of Ram) on it and NOTHING else, it will remain clean and free from fragmentation...which is what happens to a HDD when it is used, reused and used again, where clean empty space is separated used space (and which is why you are expected to "defragment" a hard drive occasionally and bring all the clean unused spaces back together again). When the page file is separated from other uses that partition remains 'clean' and free of used fragments....

As for "scratch disk", that's to photoshop what page file is to the OS...photoshop needs and opens a file space for temporary use while you process a file...it's supposed to be 20x the size of the largest file you open and use...many heavy users use a complete HDD for that scratch disk, though most typical users don't need to go THAT far, I think.

...finally, I have read that with plenty of Ram you don't need virtual memory/page file since you won't run out of Ram...but I've also read that OS NEEDS virtual memory to operate properly...so I let OS manage page file on the C-drive, and create the page file myself on the other drive...which as I said, will likely be used only rarely...

I hope that helps...

I'll refer you to this link. In a UNIX OS you can actually increase performance by putting it behind a separate partition, but for windows as long as you're running a smart version like Vista or 7, it will treat the pagefile as 'one' file and move it around the hard disk as a whole. http://superuser.com …-partition-but-same-drive

Sp1207 wrote in post #11669518
I'll refer you to this link. In a UNIX OS you can actually increase performance by putting it behind a separate partition, but for windows as long as you're running a smart version like Vista or 7, it will treat the pagefile as 'one' file and move it around the hard disk as a whole. http://superuser.com …-partition-but-same-drive

The point made refers to disks that get little used..
"Using this technique to move the pagefile onto another drive that is otherwise hardly ever accessed is much more often a good idea, though you'll only see the benefit when the system is [Sic] a fair amount of paging to/from disk activity..... if you want to and don't mind the reduced efficiency introduced by working through the filesystem layer when pages need to be moved between RAM and disk, but very few people do because it isn't the default and there is very little (if anything) to gain by it in most, if not all, common use cases."


..so if it's on a disk used for storing data/files, I'm not sure it wouldn't hurt to have page file on a separate partition...esp. as it will be little used with systems having a lot of available Ram.