Janie -

Mostly "multimedia" is a buzzword invented by advertising types to make people think that whatever they slap the name on "does everything." There are a few conventional interpretations though.

Music is one medium, and the advertising wonks think that means "listen to something really loud." "Multimedia" systems usually have a fairly decent sound playback setup. Sometimes (not always) a "multimedia" computer will be set up to attach to remote speakers that you can scatter around the house. Recently some new computers have had no, or very limited, music input jacks (microphone? tape deck?)since the ad departments don't know you can make music, and when you make your own music you don't buy "published media."

Movie/TV is another medium, and "multimedia" systems usually include a DVD for playing "TV shows" (movies?) and may (not always) be set up so you can play the DVD on your computer while using your TV set (if the TV is equipped for it) as the display. Usually a "multimedia" computer will allow you to burn your own DVDs.

Some "multimedia" computers make it easy to plug your home video camera in and download your home movies to your hard drive, and usually to burn them to DVDs. Downloading pictures from your digital camera (stills) is pretty trivial, so most of the "multimedia" computers are likely to have "enough" USB ports and may possibly have other kinds of jacks.

The "experts" differ on whether the web is a separate "media" but good web performance is expected of any reasonable capable computer.

There is literally nothing that a "multimedia" computer can do that can't be done fairly easily, and usually not too expensively, using any reasonably adequate computer. The "multimedia" label goes on if it's all packaged together so you don't have to look for the little extras. The common differences that really matter are somewhat larger hard drives (to save all that "media" on) and usually a little bit more RAM memory (to speed up the processing of all that "media.")

The Dell that you looked at, with a 160 GB hard drive has enough HD capacity to get you by for a while, unless you start trying to record everything and leave it on the hard drive. If you burn DVDs and/or CDs and delete the deadwood files from the drive as you go, or just remove some of the office work you'll generate when you do backups, 160 GB should be more than adequate, and it's about twice as large as is common on "plain vanilla" computers selling at discount prices.

The Dell also offered 1 GB of RAM, which is about 4x what you'll find on many bargain computers. I consider 256 MB RAM inadequate for windows, but a lot of computers come with about that, and they will run Windows - just not to my satisfaction. 512 MB makes a pretty good WinXP machine, if you don't try to run a bunch of things all at the same time. At 1 GB, you should be able to open 50 snapshots in photoshop while surfing the web with a half dozen browser windows open and make notes in Word while you balance your checkbook in Excel without hearing a burp out of the machine (If you've also got enough hard drive free space).

For recording your own music you may need to add a better soundcard than what comes in the Dell. I couldn't find specs. The Dell card will almost certainly have good sound output for listening, but may not have anyplace to plug in a microphone - a fairly common defect in recent computers. With 5 or 7 (or more) speaker output jacks, plus digital TV lines, they have to leave something off and the mic jack is often sacrificed.

To do good editing of your own sound files, and to edit your own DVDs, and certainly to touch up family snapshots, you almost certainly will want eventually to add dedicated programs to do the specialized tasks properly. A multimedia computer may include some sample ("gimme software") programs that will do some of it, but they're seldom satisfactory once you figure out what others people can do that you can't do with the freebie stuff.

Most of the web activities you describe depend more on the speed of your connection than on any capabilities of your computer, although plentiful RAM helps some. Keeping at least 40% of your (adequately sized) hard drive available and defragmented fairly often also helps, and with 160 GB you shouldn't have trouble having enough free space for quite a while.

Note that both the large HD and the extra RAM at Dell were "specials" and their offers of this kind often last only a week or so (esp at Dell); so you may need to start over and see what's special this week, unless you've requested a "hold" on the Dell offer - which sometimes they'll allow, and sometimes not.

1. Get at least 512 MB RAM if possible.(1 GB preferred, more than 1 GB probably is not worth much to you. 256 MB will run, but not really up to speed.)

2. Get WinXP Service Pack 2

3. Get at least a 160 GB hard drive.

I don't personally care for extremely large drives, but up to 250 GB wouldn't be offensive, if it's a real deal. I'd rather have 2 180 GB for reliability, and you can add on another drive fairly easily later.

4. Buy from a reasonably established seller.

(I've used web purchase and UPS/FedEx delivery for my last 9 computers, but I've dealt with "selected" makers of my own careful choosing. I have a Dell laptop that's been good. The others were all desktops from an "industrial strength" builder.

5. Get as much useful productivity software tossed in as possible, since it's a lot cheaper as OEM than if you buy it all separately. Don't worry about it if you won't use it.

6. Get a price that satisfies you.

7. Bite hard on the bullet. Ignore the pain. Get a computer.

John