This is such a difficult question to answer if someone never worked in an office that required a knowledge of Windows. I ran across an article recently that was titled "5 things to never put on your resume". Number one was saying you know all about PC's and Microsoft Office. Why? It's assumed that EVERYBODY knows this basic stuff, if you don't forget about even applying.

It sounds like you need the book Windows for Dummies. Not a joke, it's available everywhere or just fumble around yourself and ask questions, that works too.

As for what PC to get it depends on what your other needs are in addition to digital audio and how far you intend to go with it. All I can say is this, forget those little netbooks that sell for $295 or so. Nowhere near strong enough. You need a regular PC that runs the full Windows 10, not the mobile version. You MUST have an SSD 256 gig minimum, 500 gig much better. Don't know what that is, look it up. The more RAM the better, I would say 8 gigs minimum but I would go for 16. A system like that will most likely have the Intel i5 processor which is good. A higher end machine will have the i7 and you could conceivably need that if you were to really get into this in a big way. Ok, ok, you don't MUST have a system like this but trust me unless you're really broke on a tight budget, this is what you will eventually want so just get it now.

A 500 gig SSD, 16 gigs of ram with an i5 processor is in the $900-1,200 range. Fry's can sell you all the components and then put the whole thing together into a finished system for $85 labor. I mention this because finding exactly what you want in an off the shelf machine can be difficult. Plus you'll have a clean install of Win 10 that you own, not an OEM version.

You probably don't know what I mean by that. The big names like Dell, HP, etc will put what's known as bloatware with their installs of Windows. It's not really bad or horrible, just annoying. There are all kinds or articles about how to uninstall all that crap so putting a system together yourself and having someone install Win10 for you from Microsoft's USB that you own avoids all that.

I mentioned Fry's as an example. There are all kinds of private computer repair shops around. Any one of those can do the same thing for you. Go in with a shopping list of what you want and they can get it and put the whole thing together for you for the same price as a high end off the shelf system. They may say you get the parts first and bring them in. That's OK, just go to TigerDirect or Newegg and order whatever you need. You don't know what you want yet but you will. The motherboard/CPU combination is where you will start and there's sites and forums that go over them.

Bob

Last edited by jazzmammal; 08/27/18 12:01 PM.
Biab/RB latest build, Win 11 Pro, Ryzen 5 5600 G, 512 Gig SSD, 16 Gigs Ram, Steinberg UR22 MkII, Roland Sonic Cell, Kurzweil PC3, Hammond SK1, Korg PA3XPro, Garritan JABB, Hypercanvas, Sampletank 3, more.