Whatever use you are going to have, all the recommendations are going to be overkill, because the costs have come down and the speeds have gone up.
Last spring I had computer problems, a computer person I know came over on his own when he found out my computer wasn't working right. He said it was junk. He went to his truck pulled out a clocked down to 233 mhz old Digital 5000 and got me going again. I took him shark fishing in appreciation and he wants to go again next season, so he said he would build me a computer this winter,if I would take him fishing again. I agreed.
He asked me what do you want. Since I have to date only 2GB on my harddrive and just surf the net and maintain my website, I said the most I would ever need is a 733mhz Pentium lll with 256 ram and a 10 GB hard drive and Win 2000 OS.
He told me he won't build me less than 1.2 mhz Pent 4 with, win xp, plenty of ram, a cd burner 40 gb hardrive ad infinatum.
everything seems to be overkill these days.
And my present computer, out of date ,yesterdays newspaper,piece of junk , just keeps on working. -Tom