I'm in the process of buying a new desktop PC but I have very little knowledge of PC technology generally. Therefore I am seeking some advice as to what I can expect for my money, where is the best place to purchase the PC from (PC World, Dell....) which products are good, bad or indifferent and so on.

I want to spend about

Here you go.

http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/products/features.aspx/dimen_5150?c=uk&cs=ukdhs1&l=en&s=dhs

The middle one is a very nice machine for the money (£599 delivered)

or a similar spec for £528 delivered can be found on the middle machine here

http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/products/features.aspx/dimen_5150?c=uk&cs=ukbsdt1&l=en&s=bsd

Which has xp home instead of media centre edition and no speakers , but they can be added as an option

Both have fast processors , 1gb memory , 160gb hard drive , DVD writer and a good 17" flat panel mointor

I have purchased computers from Mesh in the past and found them to be good.

This one might be close to what you are looking for at

Aldi's Medion machine has everything you could ever want in a PC, although without monitor and also a bit over your budget to start with.

http://www.medion.co.uk/flash/md8800/index.html

Thanks for the advice guys.

I've just bought a Compaq Presario desktop PC from PC World:

Pentium 4 Processor 519k

1GB RAM

250GB hard drive

DVD RW

128mb ATI Radeon X300SE Graphics card

9-in-1 media card reader

7 USB connections

19" TFT

Any half descent PC around the £400-£500 mark should have everything you need. Just be picky about the monitor if you plan to use it for re-touching photos or any photoshop work generally as LCD's often don't have the same ability to represent colours as CRT's do. Having said that there are many LCD monitors out there that do a great job of this but i'd search for a few reviews first and expect to pay at least £250 for one although there's lots of deals out there.