Solved! Help an Outdated Mom Design a New Computer Set Up?

[rscpmom]

I'm a stay-at-home mom and haven't been doing anything but diapers for a while. A lot has changed in five years, and I'd appreciate help designing a new computer set up.

What I Need It To Do
-Desktop that will support basic activities like email, shopping, tax apps and making photo albums
-Something tiny that I can mount under my desk
-Something fast because when I worked, I always had really fast computers to run Adobe Creative Suite. (I don't do that anymore but I am used to good performance. My mom's computer, for example, makes me cringe. It's new yet so slow.)
-Storage for a ton of pictures with easy access to said pictures when I'm making photo albums

What I Think I Need & Questions
-I think I should go for the HP Mini or this Dell Micro. What do you think?
-Add a SSD external hardrive because it slow down the computer to store too many photos on it. Or is this G-technology external drive perhaps what I want?
-If I connect both to the computer, will the online program Backblaze back them up automatically?
-When I mount a workstation under the desk, do I have to worry about it overheating? All the options I see are flush to desk, but I may be looking in the wrong places.

THANK YOU!

 

[hang-the-9]

I like those mini systems but the one you linked is too much CPU for your use. SSD is very very good to have, just about a must in my opinion. Online backup solutions should allow you to configure what they backup, and yes it's a good idea to have an external drive for backups as well as the drive in the system.

This 3070 with an i5 is fine for your use https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/sho...-micro/spd/optiplex-3070-micro/s019o3070mffus if you want a very small system.

If you mount it, make sure you have space around the vents. A place that does not have vents is OK to mound close to another surface. There are brackets made for the micro systems like those Dell computers https/www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1478920-REG/dell_mnt_odd_mff_d9_vesa_mounting_bracket_w.html/?ap=y&ap=y&smp=y&smp=y&lsft=BI:514&gclid=Cj0KCQjw-r71BRDuARIsAB7i_QMjyoVpvC3a72Yinsh6BIKVeXcJvhsPsXMiUJeUsxz5TwPl0S6YcI8aAujnEALw_wcB they can go on back of a monitor, or you can mount it to a desk with screws if you want.