PC
Buying Basics
When it comes to buying a new PC
spending a $100 or $200 more can make the difference in the
PC lasting you three years up to as many as five to six
years. Note: The PC
will last longer than that but the software being
distributed to PCs after that amount of time will strain the
hardware to a point of making it inoperable.
When you look in the Sunday circular
every electronics store in town is offering a PC for $500
with a monitor, printer, and all the accessories. The only
good thing about the packaged deal is the price. The
equipment is bottom of the line. It will have a minimum
amount of memory, low end processor along with all the other
components including motherboard, video card and network
card. The warranty at most will be for one year and will
require you to bring PC in or mail it off to a tech depot
for repair. Even though it looks like a deal you are really
less than what you pay for.
Parts to consider when looking over the specifications:
1.
Processor:
A)
Pentium
Core 2 Duo
B)
Pentium
D
C)
Pentium
4
D)
AMD
E)
Celeron
There is some overlap. For example the
fastest Pentium D processor is better than the slowest
Pentium Core 2 Duo and so forth down the line of processors.
More details for each processor can be found on the vendors’
websites.
2.
Memory:
Any
computer you purchase whether it is a desktop or laptop
should have at least 1 gigabyte of memory installed. The
minimum requirements of Windows XP are 256MB and Windows
Vista is 512MB but that only accounts for the requirements
of the operating system and not of the additional software
that will be installed on the machine.
3.
Disk Space:
The amount of disk space that you need is relative to how
you use the PC. A disk drive with 80GB capacity is the lower
level of this threshold. With digital pictures, music,
email, and data files disk space can be consumed rather
quickly. Additional disk space can easily be added by
getting an external USB disk drive. This is also good for
backing up the contents of your pc.
4.
Optical Device:
Most machines on
the market have at least a DVD reader but a DVD Writer is
the way to go and only for an extra twenty to thirty
dollars. This will allow you to burn and play DVDs and CDs
of any variety.
5.
Video Card:
The video
card is important for two reasons. The high end cards will
help improve the performance of you computer by being able
to process photos, web sites, videos and other forms of
media faster than the standard onboard video adapter. 128MB
Video card is a good to start. If you are going to play
games the 512MB video card is a good place to start.
6.
Brand :
Doesn’t matter what brand you buy because all the internal
parts come from the same places.
I personally buy Dell business class
systems. The primary reason is because the internal parts of
any PC you buy are coming from the same vendors and are
assembled under that brand. Dell has very good technical
support along with a good onsite warranty program. They will
come to your house and fix your PC instead of you having to
unplug it and take it to an authorized repair center
somewhere in town.
On the Dell website they having several
models but I like the Optiplex brand PC’s. It comes with a 3
year onsite next day warranty with the price. Also it does
not come loaded down with a lot of trial software and other
programs that are not needed. The most you have to take off
is AOL unless you have an AOL account.
A computer can be compared to an
automobile in some aspects. It’s going to lose value as soon
as you buy it and you will never get much for it in return
on a trade in or resale. It is better to spend a little
more on a high end machine up front so two years down
the road you are not having to purchase another machine to
replace the one you just got because it no longer performs
as you need it to.
