I have a 5 year old SCSI dual PII at 400Mhz, 128MB RAM... in a full size tower. The fans are real noisy, and hard drives are beginning to fail.

I am looking to upgrade to a mini-tower.

I want dual hard drives, and a tape drive for backups and writable CDROM.

Not sure which processor, AMD/Pentium. 512RAM, 1GB swap? I would think it's faster than what I got now.

I would like to get a ready system, not build it. Any suggestions? Would IDE work just as well as SCSI? I want a quiet fan.

I mostly use it for web browsing, emacs, gimp and occasionally xpdf, which is slow under my current system.

I would suggest trying to use IceWM or other light Window Managers and possibly switch to a fast distro like Slackware, Gentoo, or LFS. If you don't want to tweak so much. you could try Slackware-based Vector.
Mini-towers are pain to work in if you would ever want to do like upgrade the system yourself. If you really want dual hard drives, you will have to put the second one in. AMD is always better than Pentium. A swap partition does not have to be more than 256MB. There is no difference between IDE and SCSI if you do not run a server. The only tape drives I have heard about being used is for servers.

Yes, IDE would work just as well as scsi. The data transfer method doen't have a whole lot to do with the noise level of the fans, though...look for a computer which advertises quiet fans, or silent PC, or something of that sort. I'm looking askance at the choice of a tape drive for backups, since you're just going to be using it as a normal PC (wouldn't a DVD burner or the CD drive you're already looking for be a whole lot more practical, not to mention cheaper and easier to get media and drivers for?). If you're not backing up whole gigs of data every day, a tape drive isn't even close to worth it.

If you want a ready system, I usually lean towards Dell...on the grounds that they don't stink as much as Compaq and HP do (the cases are roomier (airflow! *gasp*), the parts always seemed slightly better quality, and their warranties are better). I agree with tuxdev, though - a mini-tower, while it looks cute and makes a good footstool under your desk, sucks for airflow, is impossible to clean (which you'll absolutely have to do, seeing as dust just clots on all the cables and such that are crammed in there all messy-like. Biggest failure reason of the computers that I've worked on: overheated due to poor airflow and dust) and is a royal pain to have to work in. And since in all liklihood you're going to have to add that 2nd hard drive yourself (not many prebuilt come stocked like that), cut yourself a break and get a normal mid-tower.

Hey.

As far as the processor goes, AMD processors tend to be a little faster than the Pentiums and 512 MB of memory should be plenty for what you'll be using the system for. Of course if you want a real speed demon, 1 GB or 2 GB is ideal. Lol. I would go for a SCSI drive, although they can be on the expensive side. An IDE will be just fine too.

One thing to keep in mind when buying a computer, too, is upgradibility. You'll want to make sure your machine has room for any upgrades you'll want to make in the future. Also, a good place to look for computers at pretty low prices is eBay. I use it all the time.

Hope this info helps!

-Tux Gamer

Tux gamer, I love your sig line. Just had to say it *grin*

thanks rose_bud4201!

LOL, I need some form of Sig myself.

Mid-tower - good point.

What Window Manager and Distro are you using? Using another Window Manager and Distro can do quite a bit to speed up the machine, if you are using KDE and FC, for example.

tuxdev, those darn sigs are hard to think of sometimes... haha. Good point about the window manager. You don't want to pick one that's too bloated or you lose precious resources.

Yep. I also agree that a mid-tower would be a wiser choice. Of course, if you have limited space or just like the idea of having a more portable system, a minibox may serve you better. It's all a matter of preference I suppose. Lol.

-Tux Gamer

gotta watch for those towers that can't support 2 hard drives and barely support 1 only because they mount it vertically.

That's true. Alot of times the retailer won't tell you if your system will support 2 hard drives, so if you want 'em, you'll have to do some digging on the web to see if you get support for two HDs. So a good piece of advice is to just do your homework (read reviews, browse forums, etc...) before buying a new computer.

-Tux Gamer

You might want to try to put together your own system. The hardest part is picking out the components, and we can help you with that. It pretty trivial to put together the actual components of a system. If you still do not want to actually put together the hardware, you can have a friend that has already put together a system do it for you. Then you can have exactly what you want.

Interesting.... I have a full size tower that I never took advantage of. So now I am thinking smaller. But now I am beginning to mess with the components more than before, so a mid-tower is more accomodating.