Hi everyone,
     I've been off these boards for quite a while. I would now be very grateful for whatever advice any of you can give me.

Here's my situation: .... Last December I reached 83, last February we sold our house. In July 2013 we move into a "Seniors Retirement Residence". Last stop before the crematorium <Grin>. But not much room compared to our old home. So packed up all my photography gear and the Epson Stylus Pro 7900 printer and shipped it off to my youngest son, 2,500 miles away.

Now I wish to add a computer to that lot to run the printer and associated software such as Qimage Ultimate.
Until now I have always bought tower desktop computers. But this looks like a smaller computer might be sufficient.
I'm going to leave the choice, and purchase, of the monitor to my son.

What are your suggestions for the computer specifications for this job ?

Hopefully, and sincerely,
Basil Meddings

Thanks Fred, I rather expected/hoped that you'd be the first to reply.
My own preference is still for a desktop but I'm beginning to realize I'm something of a dinosaur in that respect.

Let's hear if anyone else drops pearls of wisdom in front om, I certainly hope so.

As I said, good to hear from you again Fred.

Cheers,
Basil

Thanks Terry, I remember you too from past years.

I think I'm moving towards simply shipping one of our two existing computers down to my son 2,500 miles away.
I've been trying to avoid that because of handling risks but Fedex seem to be reasonably careful even if a bit costly.
Both of our computers were custom-built in May, 2011 so, like me, they're a bit long in the tooth.
Both have an i7-2600K cpu on an Asus P8P67 m/b with 16GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 RAM. Storage is 4 x WDC Caviar Black 2TB drives and the boot drive on the one I will ship is a 750GB Seagate Momentus hybrid drive. That hybrid drive came about because I messed up the original 256GB OCZ Vertex 3  SSD and I didn't quite know how to "secure erase" the SSD. So I chickened out and swapped in the Seagate hybrid drive.

Moving into a 685 sq. feet apartment in July 2013 means that two big tower desktops would probably take up too much room although twin computers in a home have a lot of advantages when one of them gets screwed up. SO shipping one down to my son seems reasonable. More or less <Grin>.

Thanks for reminding me about Mike Chaney's notes on modern monitors. I remember thinking when I first read it, that like all of Mike's stuff, it was clear, easy to read, and helpful. As I said a day or so ago, I'll leave my son to purchase whatever monitor he wants to use for his printer/computer combination. But I'll let him see Mike's comments and a few reviews of current IPS monitors.

As a complete aside, what is the significance of the "Metric" in your "handle" ?
I ask because I spent about a quarter century at work representing some of the Canadian nickel producers on the various committees of TC 155 of the International Standards Organisation.

Again, thanks Terry.
Ditto to Fred

Regards,
Basil

Well, now, I have to make a small correction.
It is true that when a person submits a question to the forum or to me directly by email, if he starts out by describing his print size as;  297.3 mm x 461.9 mm, I have no clue in my head what size print that might be to me!
It could be 4 x 6 or 30 x 40".
So I turn it over to my good friend and colleague, Metric Mann

On the other hand, I fully comprehend the relationship between the logic and sense behind meters, centimeters, millimeters, micrometers, and can roll between them easily.
My problem is visualizing some length in mms unless I start with 1000 mm and work back.

So I guess you could call me "Inchman", Footman or Yard man.

 :)Fred

But Basol, old friend! You left out horses at 16 hands high, Hectares, Liters, CCs, grams and Kgms, tons and Metric tons, Fahrenheit and Celsius, .... etc etc.

Terry drives me "bananas" when he Skypes me that he is overwhelmed by the heat of the day; it's 24 degrees.
That reminds me, how can you be overwhelmed, when you haven't yet been whelmed?

Strange world.
Fred

from Oxford English Dictionary - whelm = engulf, submerge.   
from elsewhere - gruntle =  the suffix -le was once a diminutive marker, the original meaning was "to grunt a little, make a small grunt", the sort of sound piglets would make. (In fact, gruntling has served as the term for a piglet in the past.) In this meaning, gruntle was first printed around 1400. Apparently, the prefix dis- was added toward the end of the 17th century to make the intransitive verb transitive. Now writers are taking it off again. The root, grunt, is thought to have an onomatopoetic or imitative origin.

Nowt queer bout the English language, just the folk who use it...