How quickly do prices drop?

[robinson09]

Hey Guys,
Im a complete noob, decided im going to build myself a decent ish computer for uni (Since im doing computer science i thought it might be nice to know how to put a computer together).
I will have an £800 budget, so am just wondering if i should get everything now or wait until the end of the summer and see if i can get any deals, will there be any significant changes in price over that time?

Thanks

 

[robinson09]

hmm yeah i see theres no good answer is there really. Think ill wait, so that at least when i go to uni it will the best at the time. Cheers guys

 

[robinson09]

Another thing worth bearing in mind when you get round to spec'ing the machine up is that you won't need one THAT amazing to be honest. It was a pretty popular misconception when I started my course 3 years ago but I've got by the entire time with an Athlon XP 2500+, 1GB ram desktop, and a 1.6Ghz Centrino Duo, 1GB RAM laptop, which have dealt well with everything I've thrown at it.

Taking this into consideration, if you get round to spec'ing the system and want to do some gaming on the machine, I wouldn't feel to guilty spending a decent amount on a card. Most important thing is getting quality parts so it doesn't fall to bits a week before your dissertation's in.

Where are you studying by the way?

yeah thats a good point, i wasn't sure if i needed to run any demanding software for my course but apparently not so thats good, ill work through summer and see what budget i can pull together.
University of Reading hopefully, where did you study?

 

[robinson09]

I did my SE degree with an Acorn Archimedes (ARM710, 4MB) - in short you won't need anything seriously powerful for the work they set. If you do then you should be able to use the uni's high end kit for it but they're not going to give undergrads that sort of exercise.

You can do all that you need with a decent laptop to be honest. Then use student Office and you'll be fine. Remember when you're a student - use the student discounts. If the company doesn't discount for students look around then phone them up with "I'm a student, this is the discount I've been offered elsewhere - do you want my business or not".
You could go with a MacBook

If you want gaming - that's a different matter but it may be better to go console.

Hmm i just cant bring myself to buy a macbook, but maybe i should give it a go. Cheers for the student tips though, ill definitely take that into account. Already got an xbox, but was going to sell it. There too noisy and mine has broken twice.

 

[robinson09]

The most demanding stuff you'd have to run would be if you took any of the gaming modules but even then stuff should run pretty nippily on a new system.

I was about to throw a spanner in the works and suggest the option of getting a notebook like the 13" MacBook with separate keyboard, mouse and display for working at home. However over the 3 years I don't think I took mine in more than a few dozen times so you'd do just fine with a desktop. Something to consider but you really don't need a laptop in lectures so there's no pressure there.

Another thing worth looking at would be a screen with a decent resolution. I started out on 1280x1024 which was fine to begin with but you'll find when you start developing in bigger IDE's there's no such thing as too much screen space. Now I'm on a 24" @ 1920x1200 and that's more like it (although I still sometimes have command line output going through the old 17").

I studied at Newcastle, rate it pretty highly. Just finished a few weeks ago but it looks like I'll be back for an MSc in September.

I might just build a nice mid price system, because i doubt ill be doing much hardcore gaming and then at least i know im definitely covered for the course.
Have got myself a 22" at the moment, i was going to use that and a 19" as secondary but we'll see.
Really looking forward to my course, its for 4 years, as im taking a year out in industry. Thanks for the feedback guys.