jay2thab

i have that computer but i chose to upgrade to 512 mb ram. Most computer "experts" say that the minimum windows needs to operate on is 256mb. As for the computer its a good computer that is reliable, easy to use and has never let me down. take the ram upgrade to at least 512 more if you can afford,it is often cheaper to do this when the cpu is being built than to upgrade down the road. make sure your hard drive is 80 gb or bigger this will give you the space to rip and encode your movies, shawshank redemption broke down to about 7gb, but dont plan on saving alot of them cause they add up fast. BTW there is a guy named rasputinj on this site that has a site that hosts crazy deals for dell. do a search on this site for his name or dell discount in the search box and you should find it. Good luck!

btw the setup you mentioned will allow you to do what you originally asked for. as for encoding it takes a while no matter how you look at it. For me i plan on 2-3 hours per movie on the system you mentioned with the 512 mb ram upgrade.