I need a recommendation on a office file server computer.?

Need to replace an office computer.
The computer shares a database program with four other computers all networked to this one main computer.
Would a higher power computer be enough like a core 2 duo 1.83, 1gb RAM, 320mb HD, 10/100 NIC and nvidia video card?

Do I need RAID?
Do I need a server computer? We are only running XPP, office2003.
Office only work, no games, light Internet surfing, antivirus running, some web multimedia.

With only 4 PC's connecting, you probably don't need anything more than a high end PC. You may want to install Server2003 on it rather than XP or Vista. This would allow you to use it as a Domain Controller. (user logins will be handled by the server rather than the individual PC's.) The most important factors for performance will be network and HD speed, not processor. 2GB ram rather than one might help, too (more space for caching disk reads). Gigabit etnernet instead of 10/100 would help, but only if all hardware (hub or switch, cabling and workstation NIC's) are also gigabit. Your network will run at the speed of the slowest component.

You can use anything from a Pentium 2 up as a file server. A file server is just a place other computers go to get a file and the distribution of files is rather quick anyhow. Obviously, the more powerful the computer the faster it's going to copy/paste/transfer/etc.

You really don't need much of a powerful machine to do this small networking project. The one mentioned in your question would be more than enough.

I'm assuming you don't want to spend a lot of money so see if this will work for you:

- get a GB NIC (for all PC's actually). Makes sense when access the main PC especially with such a small network.
- for a network of 4 computers, a server is not really needed. But if you want to implement RAID, see about getting a server (XP doesn't handle it too well).

You can get a pretty decent DELL workstation that will suffice and not break the bank to do what you need. Just don't go for the low/high end workstations (middle of the road).