New Workstation Coming/Requesting Advice

Good evening,

Been running Sonar 6 PE and numerous soft synths on a Dell Inspiron 9100 (P4 2.8 GHz) laptop with 1 GB RAM and 800 MHz FSB. Works pretty well, but has serious limits to the number of synths, effects, etc., I can use before doing lots of creative "bouncing." I use the laptop for everything--DAW, Internet, CAD, Programming, Web, Photoshop, DTP, etc. Generally, I'm really surprised Sonar has been so stable considering the numerous hard hitting applications I have installed.

I use Sonar and Project 5 as a hobby; I'm not a music/sound professional. But, for my electrical engineering degree and carerr I need something more than the old P4 can give. I am expecting a Dell Precision 690 Workstation next week.

I picked the Woodcrest 5140 Xeon 2.33 GHz w/1333 MHz FSB (only one dual-core CPU at this time as money is tight). I ordered 2 GB of RAM (hoped for 4 GB but chose the better processor which cost an extra $260). The Operating System will be Windows XP Professional SP2, the same as on the laptop. For audio, since I was buying everything through Dell (I know the lectures; it's where my account was through school and I'm generally happy if I rid myself of all the crap), I picked what I considered the best of the lot: An M-Audio Audiophile 192. For the laptop, I'm using an Echo Indigio I/O (hi, Susan!). I picked the Audiophile mainly due to (1) the ASIO driver support and (2) the S/N and dynamic range specs (better than the other M-Audio stuff listed [Delte 44, 1010LT, etc.]).

I have an external 7200 RPM 160 GB HDD that I can use for my cakewalk projects, multisamples, etc., as I've read that having a second drive is preferred for that. In time, I'd like to add a second, internal, 250 GB HDD and have a Linux dual-boot configuration. For now, it's just the one 250 GB internal and 160 GB external drives. Oh, video is the nVidia FX550 if that makes a difference (not to much 3D requirement here so it seemed the minimum solution).

Since my OS is XP Pro SP2, I have a lot of "administrative" and security-type options. Since I have a rather large (compared to my laptop) HDD, I'd like to create various user profiles for things like DAW, Engineering, Internet, etc., to try and separate my multi-purpose machine. The big question is: does creating the various user accounts really prevent a lot of junk from creeping into the OS? From my experience, it looks like it's just a bunch of personal settings and a My Documents type folder structure that's created (I hate the My this and My that folders and don't use them). From a performance standpoint, does anyone know if it's possible to have various "OS" configurations with one license of XP Pro? Of course, any advice is always welcome as I'm pretty new to computer administration stuff.

Thanks so much,
Scott

[breathing better now]

Thanks for the reply. I was half expecting a lot of "oh my gosh, don't taint your DAW with..."

Later when I get a new HDD or two, I think I'll put a fresh copy of Win XP on it and Linux on the other and then create a multi-boot option to bring up the various configurations I want. After more research it seems like User accounts in Windoze are pratically nothing to do with the OS (except for maybe Explorer settings, etc.). One thread I read recently said they created different User accounts with reduced priveleges for Internet surfing, and I may try something like that, or have a DAW startup configuration that disables by default the LAN and doesn't turn on the Zone Alarm AV, etc.

I see Cakewalk has a Dell Precision 390 listed under their supported systems but not a 690. I didn't see a reference to the 390 on Dell's website, so hopefully I'm not getting a lemon.

BTW, watch out for the following gimmick: When configuring the 690, the default page listed the Dempsey 5060 CPU as the unit above entry level (it actually costs MORE to get the more power-hungry 5060 CPU over the default Woodcrest 5100 series, but I think they want me to think that more GHz==more power?). I'm glad I did a bit of research before settling on the 5140. In a perfect world, I would have like the Opteron the best, I think, but I'm not sure who sells them (Sun?).

Thanks again,
Scott