It's not bad for the money, but there are some concerns that I have about any of these pre-built computer systems.
1) Power Supply: Often times these computers from the big brands (HP, Dell, Acer, etc.) will include a very poor quality power supply with just enough power to run the hardware at "ideal" levels meaning about 75% load. Keep in mind that a power supply will slowly lose some of its capability of outputting power as it ages, and this rate of decreased output is more noticeable on these cheaper power supplies. That means 2 to 3 years down the line the power supply might only output enough power to support the whole system at 50% load. If you've got a ton of things running on the computer at once, the power supply might not have enough juice to handle it and can cause stability issues or simply fail. It also makes upgrading or adding to the system very difficult. For instance, in an Acer desktop with this kind of specs you're generally going to be getting around a 300 Watt power supply. Say that you need to add in a dedicated graphics card to give you a little more performance for rendering, or better resolution options and performance. With only a 300 Watt power supply, there's hardly any graphics cards out there that you can add that would be more powerful than the integrated graphics already included.
2) Hard drive: While this system lists an impressive "1 TB hard drive" these companies never list out the real details that make a difference. The most likely piece of hardware to fail in your computer is your hard drive, which is even more critical because that's where you store irreplaceable data. So it is critical that not only do you have a solid backup routine in place, but that you have a very good quality hard drive and one that meets your specific needs. Nearly all of these cheaper desktops including large capacity drives of 1 TB or more are actually utilizing "green" or "low power" hard drives to get high capacity at low costs. What does this mean? A green or low power hard drive is one that operates at much slower speeds than standard hard drives. Instead of operating at the standard 7,200rpm speed of a normal platter SATA hard drive today, these drives operate at 5,400rpm or even as low as 4,200rpm which makes a HUGE difference in the overall performance of your computer. The slowest part of the computer is your storage subsystem, so if you're making this part even slower, the entire computer will operate much slower. Where you are planning to use some intensive design programs and plotting with this computer, you need to have a lot of scratch disk space, but more importantly it needs to be FAST scratch disk. A low power hard drive is far from the best option for a scratch disk, even if it does have a lot of space. Additionally, what kind of cache does this hard drive have? It seems like a small thing, but the amount of cache that a hard drive has can make a huge difference on its overall performance (and as stated previously, thus makes a huge difference on the entire system speed.) A 1 TB drive should have at least 32 MB of cache or it will be incredibly slow, and often times the cheaper low power hard drives only come with 16 MB of cache. Just for comparison, two identical hard drives from Western Digital (640 GB 7,200rpm Black Edition) where one includes 32 MB of cache and the other has twice that at 64 MB of cache, the hard drive with the higher cache has performed up to 25% faster in our testing.
3) Windows 7: This is more of a question or something to keep an eye out for than anything. In the description or details, does it mention if this is the 32-bit (x86) version of Windows 7 Home Premium included, or the 64-bit (x64) version? If you wish to upgrade more RAM in the future (and 4 GB today is becoming almost a minimum necessity while using some of the design programs you mention) then you will have to have the 64-bit version of Windows to recognize anything more than about 3 GB of RAM. Additionally, just be aware that any pre-installed Windows 7 system from Dell, HP, Acer, etc. is going to have a LOT of stuff installed that is going to really slow the system down. It's pointless advertising, trials, or utilities that they include because companies pay them to install it and thus they can lower the cost of their computers to be more competitive. For the most ideal performance, a lot of this pre-installed software should be removed.
Now, that being said, it still is a very good system for the money. I've used the AMD Athlon II X4 processors in a ton of computers as they offer great performance for the cost, they are real workhorses and I've yet to have a problem with a single one. The things mentioned above are things that I mention to anyone looking to get a new computer from a store, from my own experience operating a computer business and handling repairs, troubleshooting, and replacing these pre-built computers for frustrated and jaded customers. So long as you are aware of these details, and the affects that they can mean to you and your business, and are fine with it then there's no reason why you shouldn't go for the deal! But it's just something to consider, and I'd recommend if you do wish to purchase the computer that you also make plans to try and upgrade or replace these troublesome components with others that are higher quality and specifically meant for handling higher-performance tasks such as design work and not just the every-other-day email and word document like these big brand computers are designed for.
