>Our small museum wants to get a new computer for our graphics department.
>Any suggestions on what to get or what to avoid?  We produce both exhibits,
>newsletters, mailings, and flyers.  We have Corvell Draw and Pagemaker and
>run on DOS.  We want to add a scanner so we want a computer that can network
>with IBM clones and can handle about graphics and text quickly.  We are
>hoping the purchase to be in the $2000-3000 range.  Any suggestions are
>welcome.  If you respond, please put Paul in the subject line.  Thank you.
 
Paul-
it sounds like you guys are already committed to a non-Macintosh platform,
which simplifies things greatly in that you won't have to wrestle with the
"PC or Mac?" decision. So look for the most RAM for your buck; software is
becoming more and more demanding in their RAM consumption (Pagemaker 5.0
needs a minimum of 8 RAM on my Mac, but seems to operate better with more;
the newest version of Photoshop wants 16 meg of RAM!) If you are going to
get eventually get a scanner, a hard drive with perhaps 1 gig would be
nice, since image storage becomes an issue. Another peripheral you should
consider is a CD-ROM drive, and perhaps a graphic accelerator of some kind
to speed things up. A 17" or better screen speeds up production time by
keeping the constant "zoom in zoom out" syndrome to a minimum. But all
these neat things can be added later: spend your limited bucks on RAM. Get
at least 8 meg..... if you get more you'll never be sorry. Despite rumours
to the contrary, I've heard that Intel's much-aligned Pentium chip is
really fast - anyone out there in museumland using one?
 
Jim Gilmore
Curator of Public Programs & Exhibitions
Redding Museum of Art & History
Redding, CA
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