Some good advise here already, but a couple additional points to add. Avoid the Mac system unless you like paying twice the amount that a PC can provide. Most are still only using intel i5 and only partial SSD.
Nothing wrong with an i5. The biggest difference between an i5 and an i7 is the i7 offers hyperthreading. While that is all well and great, some applications don't take full advantage of that capability, so the performance difference can be moot.
SSD also has drawbacks that people aren't aware of so research that option closely. Speed isn't everything!
Care to elaborate?
Aside from cost, I haven't seen much issues with them. Early in their life durability was a potential issue and some SSD controllers (Sandforce) didn't perform well when the SSD got full, but much of that has been resolved.
Currently, I have 3 SSDs in PC (a 512GB M.2, a 1TB, and a 256GB) along with two 5 TB 7200 RPM drives. I have a few other SSD's lying around that were in old servers and laptops. None of them have given me any issues and all have provided performance that was leaps and bounds better than the mechanical drives.
Avoid Windows Ten like the plague... try to purchase Windows 7 if possible and block Windows Ten from forcing itself onto your system.
I've been using Windows 10 since it released last year and I haven't had an issue. So unless there is a specific reason to avoid it, I don't know if this is really good advice to give.
The use of portable hard drives is essential to keep your computer from being bogged down.
Huh?
Portable drives are great when you want to store a backup in a safe space, need to transfer data, or you have to access your data on multiple systems (of course, the cloud has largely taken over this task). But to use a portable drive to prevent your system from being bogged down? Unless there is a miswording here, I have never heard of this in all my years in IT (large data centers, etc.).
Portable drives, depending on their connection, can actually be slower than one built into the computer. Also, since many external drives tend to power down or go to sleep when not in use (more so than those internal to the PC), any time something needs to be accessed or a list of drives needs to be called, the drive will then need to wake up. This can cause a hitch, pause, or delay on your machine until the drive has completed "spinning up". This happens all too often on my USB 3.0 drive dock that I use to make backups to. It is only needed a few times a week for backups late at night. If I forget to turn it off when not in use, I run into pauses on my machine as the drive wakes up, even when I am not trying to access the drive itself. It could be something as simple as opening My Computer, doing a file search, or launching a program that tries to make contact with all connected drives.
Good monitor/graphics card is important for good display and post processing!
-Martin P
https://www.flickr.com/photos/photosauraus_rex/
. And those other tribes, well, not so much.
