Nurse Terrie.

Rocket scientist/lawyer whose office is next to mine pretty much said the same thing. Thanks!

(Now, I seriously need to avoid the temptation to buy a cab...)

Need to replace an old machine that is also the server for two other desks- in an underutilized, three (3) desk network. Word processing, calendaring, a spread-sheet here and there. Nothing major. Just need a bigger hard-drive and something faster than the 6-7 year-old machine has. XP was great, but just isn't cutting it anymore with some new software and peripherals. Lag-time is getting too long. Looking at a fully pre-loaded HP with 6 gigs of ram and an AMD quad-core processor. Intel I-7 machines are twice the price...

From the sounds of it, it's mostly going to be a glorified file server. The machine you are looking at may even be a bit overkill for what you are doing. If it was me, I'd look at some of the cheap NAS (Network Attached Storage) boxes on the market now, you can get ones with two hard drives in a RAID 1 array (for fault tolerance, mirrors the data across both drives in case one decides to die) pretty cheap nowadays, then buy a cheap desktop with just 4 gigs of RAM for the light-duty workstation or even see if you can stretch the old one out a bit now that it is no longer doing file-server duties. If you need print server capability as well some of the NAS boxes can do that too.

In any case, you won't really notice the difference between an AMD machine and an Intel one, just make sure you go with a decent quality brand if you do go the route of using it as your file server, and preferably get one that has two hard drives in a fault-tolerant RAID 1 configuration. My home machine has a RAID 1 array, was a rather nice insurance policy since one of my drives did eventually die after about 2.5 years of service, but I didn't loose any data because of the RAID.

LOL! Can you repeat that in english?

lol i must speak the same language because i agree 100% all tho i will say you are comparing a i7 intel vs a much different amd cpu. there are plenty of intel quads at the same price as the amd quads but no where near the performance of a i7. now what i do not know is if amd has a cpu out comparable to a i7 its been a couple years now and i am sure they do but the price will be closer to a i7. now just to point this out most of the quads you are looking at are 5 year old tech that has been boosted over the years lower power higher speed and more fsb. i7 has been out for a while but really kicks in with ddr3 what ddr3 is 3 sticks of memory turned into one for massive amounts of data throughput. more sticks of higher ram and a expensive cpu will push the price up a lot. here is what it would cost vs both computers to build.

amd/intel reg quads

150. mother board

150. cpu

100 ram

plus case rom drives power supply

normally totaled at 500-600 pending video card

intel i7

200 mother board

200-300 cpu

300 memory

plus the rest anywhere from 800-1200 pending what kind of video card

it comes down too do you want the best newest tech and willing to pay for it or do you just want it to work.

I am still using my intel quad 6600 from over 5 years ago and still rocks. I wanted a i7 but instead i stopped buying computer stuff and started buying cigars one expensive hobby is enough for me.

and not sure where your buying from but the best 2 places i know of is #1 www.newegg.com #2 www.tigerdirect.com

newegg is my favorite tiger is a good price check to see who has it cheaper.

IME with a RAID Server is that it's best if they are hot-swappable - can replace drives without shutting down the machine. Not sure if the NAS devices offer that feature. Personally I run a Raid 10 with data striped across four drives. Replaced a drive 3-4yrs ago and our downtime was minimal due to how fast the RAID was able to rebuild the swapped drive. With a NAS your downtime for rebuild may longer (depending on size of course) and you have to be comfortable managing the system via remote access. But CBD is correct - it sounds like you need a small Server. There are numerous advantages to running a Server (Performance, File & User Management, etc) over just sharing files from a desktop. In the long-term you will be happier with the investment.

Let me restate it a bit:

If all you really need is a file server, a NAS unit may fit the bill nicely. They are little devices that basically let you add storage to your network and access it from all your machines. Here is a recent review of one here to get a better idea:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4510/lg-n2a2-nas-review 

And here is a article that describes them a bit that may help too:

http://www.smallbusinesscomputing.com/buyersguide/article.php/3739061/Network-Attached-Storage-A-Primer-for-SMB-Owners.htm 

The reason I recommend RAID is that it helps safeguard your data. I'm making the assumption that you have business data on this network and that additional protection from loss or downtime would be a perk. A RAID device helps prevent data lose by replicating the data across 2 or more hard drives. Hard drives are mechanical, so they are prone to failures at some point, this just assures that it would take a catastrophic failure (or a massive lightning strike) before you lost your data. Remember though that RAID is not replacement for proper data backups, you still need offsite storage of backups to ensure that you don't loss anything in the case of fire or hurricane, etc..

If you go the NAS route, you may not need to replace the old PC, since it will no longer be bogged down by file serving duties. You could also try doing a complete format and factory restore on the system (after you've moved the data over to the NAS of course) to see if i brings it back to a acceptable level of performance, it could just be bloated down with a bunch of crapware.