Please evaluate this desktop computer

[Bean Counter]

That computer is more than good for what you do. I’d keep the SSD. The most important thing for you is your monitor. Get one that prioritizes color recreation, because a lot of them sacrifice color accuracy for refresh rates.

I talked with some photo pros and this is what they say. For that reason, I'm avoiding "bundled" packages which have a good generic monitor and maybe everything is nice and cheap, but wont let my system shine. Sigh--here comes monitor calibration. 

That dell with the ssd will make a great machine, an ssd for the os is the biggest upgrade that most people don't make to their machines due to being cheap. Personally I would use Windows 7 on it over 8 but either way you will be happy with it. If you were into building your own pc you could save some cash and build a faster machine probably but pc building isn't for everyone.

  You're talking about me again?  You'd be proud--I'm getting over this slowly but surely.

One dude told me that it might be better to have the SSD + an i3 processor than an i7 with all spinning disks. Seems like they haven't gone down in price much which is why Crapple Macintrash is putting several 256GB SSDs instead of larger into some configuration.

+ 1 on Newegg if you go that route

I keep forgetting about them. Is there warranty anything comparable to Costco? Costco lets me return within 90 days if its a headache and warranty for 2 years.

[Bean Counter]

I'm kind of curious why you aren't staying with Mac/Apple? 

My pc is a little less than 1.5ys old (windows 8, i7 Processor) and at about the same time I bought my new pc we bought our daughter a new Mac Book Air.  At the time I had ONLY used Windows based pc's.  Since my daughter has had her Mac Air I've had the chance to learn their way of doing things compared to the pc's I've always used.  Since spending a little time with her Mac Air, when it's time for me to get a new one, it'll be a Mac.  Mine has the good i7 Processor, big hard drive and more RAM than I'll ever need but her Mac just does everything a little better and even though I've been pretty lucky and haven't had any viruses, it's no secret Macs "rule" when it comes to NOT getting viruses where as with PC's it's more of a when you'll get one versus if you'll get one.  It's not often you have a Mac user that switches to PC's, typically, it's the other way around.  Also, I always thought graphics was one of Mac's specialties.

Mac's fit and finish are beautiful. Plus yes you definitely get less hiccups with the tightness of their hardware and software integration. That said, some of their hardware is a lot more marked up, part for part. They still sell i5 processors and 5400RPM hard drives, for instance.

My principle complaint with Apple is that they are into being green and have switched to a lead free paste to connect components and what not. As I said earlier, Lightroom generates a TON of heat and that has caused the more  brittle lead free paste to crack and cause loose connection between the discrete graphics card and the logic board (aka the motherboard). This causes the screen to spazz out. We then have to shut the computer down and wait an hour or more for it to cool off and then reboot it up to half a dozen times before it starts up again. Apple knows about this but doesn't seem to give a crap. They told me to pay them $300+ for them to put in a remanufactured logic board using the same free faulty thermal paste    Fools. I wrote several levels of the company, very nicely and patiently, all the way up to Tim Cook himself, and they told me to go jump in a creek. I don't spend $1,500 on a laptop for it to last less than two years. Its a great machine when its up and running, but if this is the attitude they're going to take towards customers I'll buy a PC for 50% cheaper. 

[Katmai Guy]

Costco store has a Dell X8700 for a grand.  Same processor, 16 GB ram, 1TB HD, Nvidia GTX 745, 4GB DDR3 graphics card, no blu-ray but a 16X dvd player.  If you don,t need the other 1TB and the 8GB, you can save 500$.
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[Bean Counter]

Thanks. Does that have the solid state drive too? 

Btw that $1,500+ I paid for my MacBook "Pro" was for the refurbished model. $250 more if it were new! In general I'm not against refurb and this experience doesn't change that--my issue was a design flaw whether it was new or used.

[FC]

Something else you might consider is looking around on Dell's scratch and dent site. I've bought my last two laptops there with a substantial savings. Buy one that you know to have more than one drive slot and then buy an ssd to replace one of the drives. You can even use Dell's own backup software to create an image (super easy to do) before swapping the drives so that you can do a factory install on your ssd.

[Bean Counter]

Cool!