What I Wish Someone Had Told Me Before I Bought My First System
Jul 25 '00
When I bought my first computer (OK, my mommy bought it for me), I had no idea what was what. Seriously, I almost bought a Mac, because we didn't know there was a difference between Apple Macintosh and the regular Personal Computer (PC). However, we picked up an Acer Aspire, mainly because it was cheap and black, which I thought was cool. So this is what I wish someone had told me before I bought that computer. Assuming you don't want a Mac.
In Order to get a good computer, you need to know several parts of the computer, because it is the type and size of these components that will determine price and how well the computer runs. These things are the CPU (central processing Unit), Ram (random access memory), Hard Drive, and CD-ROM. Now, here are my suggestions of what you need. Keep in mind, while I don't really believe in suggesting actual brand names, I'm leaving this list of things so that if you have a brand in mind, you can take what I'm telling you, and make sure the model you pick out has all of this.
The Central Processing Unit
This is like the engine in a car, for lack of a better analogy. We all know cars like yugo, and ford festivas which are designed for people with smaller incomes. These cars aren't very powerful, and they aren't very fast. This is how the CUP war is coming along. There are several types of CPUs, and I suggest that if you can afford it, you go with the best, which is believe to be the Pentium III. The New AMD Athlon is supposedly pretty good, giving pentium a run for it's money, but AMD is also responsible for the k6 chip, which I think is completely terrible. Sincerely, 3 friends bought computers using that CPU, and it lacks power, and speed and in general is just not worth anyone's money. you may find people who say that they love their K6 chips, but I've found no one who does a great deal of work, no one who needs a really powerful computer is going to be happy with the k6. So, if you can afford it, get a pentium 3. It's what the web is really based on, nothing else will really suffice. As of now, 800 MHz computers are around, but anything higher than a 400 MHz will be fine.
Ram
This facilitates the speed of your computer by storing certain info that is accessed often, meaning that when you open up common applications, it won't have to go searching through a massive hard drive, which can take quite a while. The more you have, the faster your computer can run things, and the more applications you can have open without slowing down your system or sacrificing power. I don't believe that anyone should be buying anything with less than 128 megabytes of ram. You could get by on 64 for right now, but I limit it to 3 months before your computer is to slow to deal. I currently have 256, but then again, I've always been a fun girl demanding more power and speed than anyone human should. You can touch me now. *smiles*
Hard Drive
This is quite simple. It's like your garage. This is where you store all your info. much like a car, Windows takes up a large bit of space, and just for the basic things that come with your computer, you'll need one Gig there. But much like a garage, you want to be able to not only house the big thing, you car, you want room to store clothes, washing machines, toys, bottom line is, you want room to breathe! so get a big hard drive. In truth, cost wise, there is a 30 dollar difference between a 10 gig and a 20 gig HD, if you know where to look. My point, space is cheap now, so get as much as you can. it's better to have too much, than too little. I have 58 gigs. I pretty.
CD-ROM
I recommend two drives, because it makes no sense today not to have a writer to make your own CDs. I suggest that when you buy your computer, you have 2 CD drives, one a DVD-player (but if you don't want one, as I didn't want one, a regular CD player is fine, get atleast 40X), and the other a rewritable drive. make sure you get two, so that you can copy CDs for people. Not like ripping off CDs, but if you have a presentation to make, especially for work, you can make copies and hand out to everyone to save them valuable download time, and you all have all the work, neatokeen, huh? not to mention if you have 2 kids, 2 computers, and one video game.... could get a little messy without being able to make duplicates.
OK, those are the big things you need to be aware of, but ofcourse I'm not omitting the importance of monitors (i say 17"), speakers (never use the ones that come with the computer, they always blow), keyboard (the natural ones are the best),Internet connection (Roadrunner, cable, DSL, anything but 56 K people!) or the mouse (i like the ones with the ball in the middle to help you scroll) but armed with this knowledge, perhaps you can go out and look smart and get what you want in a computer, one that works well, and keeps you interested in the world events by not flaking out on your, or crashing and such.
Latros.
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
SummerBabe
|
|
Reviews written: 4
Trusted by: 2 members
|
|
|
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.