can anyone recommend any good pc manufacturers or any websites to buy a new pc from. wanting decent spec at no more than 400.00 pound

Try Dell (http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/default.aspx?c=uk&l=en&s=gen) or Mesh (http://www.meshcomputers.com/updated/index.htm)

Evesham are also a good manufacuturer - had my last 2 from them and both have been very good machines. Additionally their phone support is also good, for my next PC it'd be either Mesh or Evesham I think...

Dell are also good but their support is in India and I've had bad experiences.

Just make sure you get a minimum of 2 years onsite - most throw this in for free but of course this might bump up the cost.

For a 'value' pc I've also bought from novatech.com they do very cheap and chearful ones which do work well.

thanks for that, I've checked dell out already but nothing in my price frame for what i want. I've also looked at novatech but that was a while ago so will take another look now. Is evesham formally known as evesham vale as my mums got one of their pcs and its been ok as well.

Yeah Evesham / Evesham vale is the same I think....
http://www.evesham.com/

Novatech.com do have some good bargains ~£290 for a PC is a good - just make sure you double check you are buying one with a monitor - sometimes isn't so clear so worth checking the spec to make sure it has everything you need.

onlything thats stopping me buying one at that price is that I'm wanting a dvd rewriter and cant seem to find one at under 400 that includes that and monitor and speakers

What sort of Spec are you looking for ? namely

how fast ?
what size / type monitor ?

I need 17inch monitor crt as cheaper. dvd and cd rewriter. Ideally 512mb although would take 256mb and again ideally 80gb hard drive but again would take 40 gb

the thing is, most places only put DVD burners in their higher spec systems... not sure why because you can get great drives for £50 these days...

personally I will never buy a made one from somewhere, I prefer to buy my own parts then I know exactly whats inside it and I can shop around and get some good deals and the exact spec I want :)

can anyone tell me if when a pc has a dvd burner, it will automtically also burn cd's?

a dvd rewriter does all formats of disk (except dvd ram generally)

cdr/cdrw and dvd +/- r/rw

so when it says cd rw/dvd rom does this mean it burns cd's but only reads dvds?

that is correct

thanks yammy. for some reason unable to reply to you direct but price way way over my budget, no chance at all of going that high

Well remember you can always pick a machine from say Novatech which is under your budget and then ask them to make a small change to the spec so that it does have a DVD Writer in it - it will put the price up a little because you are adding to it but they will happily do it for you.

have you tried the Dell outlet? They offer already built systems at good prices (they are checked out and carry the Dell warranty and support).

Also (rather riskier) look at the Dell systems (new) being offered on Ebay. I bought one last year and its been fine.

have you tried maxx at www.specialreserve.com aries at http://www.savastore.com/ariespc/ another reccomended store is www.novatech.co.uk and compaq. also i kno that you wouldnt like to go to pc world, however they do have some amazing deals if you look hard enough, eg i got a compaq for 600 with a 15" TFT, 128mb graphics from NVIDIA and a 3.4gz processor (Pentium 550 W HT tech) just because the tower was missing its box and a shelf model (having a total of 30mins shelf life and had not even been turned on). It was normally £1100.

good places for parts would be online at Dabs www.dabs.com (which are great with delivery and returns) and ebuyer www.ebuyer.com