Turn your vanilla PC into a digital darkroom, DV editing station, personal music studio, or telecommuter's dream machine. We've tested an array of products that get you from here to there.
The beauty of the PC is its flexibility. Each beige box is a tabula rasa waiting for the imprint of its owner, and with the right mix of hardware and software, the possibilities are nearly limitless. With this premise, we gathered four fairly standard machines--Dell Dimension XPS B866r PCs, each with a Pentium III/866, 128MB of RAM, and a 30GB EIDE hard drive running Windows 98 SE--and gave our experts one instruction: turn this functional but boring Honda Civic into a kickin' hot rod.
The results are eye-opening. We wound up with a digital darkroom for the professional photographer, a digital-video-editing station suitable for business, a PC perfect for the home office, and an audio mixer powerful enough for any musician. There's a lot that goes into making this successful. We'll tell you what you need to consider and help you narrow the choices.
Contents
Darkroom sans chemicals | |
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Video's Middle Ground | |
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Remote Location, with View | |
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Check Your Fidelity | |
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