Thanks so much for all the help, it is appreciated as I'm not at all up to speed on PCs (pardon the pun!). Thanks also for the offers of equipment; however, as I'm in Spain right now I would sooner pick something up locally for speed and convenience reasons.
Sounds like there is some decent kit second hand. Mr Bungle, does
this Lenovo seem like a reasonable deal? HDD is perhaps a bit small, but for the price...
I have also been considering the stuff in
this franchise who have several branches all wthin about 4 miles of me. Same 4mb RAM as above but bigger hard drive and newer processors, worth 100+ euros more? ... choices, choices!
Incidentally, it seems the trend is towards smaller profile desktop cases rather than towers. Is there any advantage to be gained from a larger case these days? Years ago I always went for the tallest for reasons of heat disipation, plus I would bung extra fans in and never had any probs with overheating. I suppose nowadays they run cooler.