But the cost of a new PC can often be disincentive for cash strapped parents or people on a fixed incomes. The good news is that buying a PC does not have to be a wallet draining experience for those concerned provided the buyer follows a few simple guidelines.
The first thing to do when buying a PC is to sit down and work out what you need it to do?
Most people buying a computer come at it from the opposite direction- buying a PCand then working out what they can do with it or are convinced by some over zealous salesman that the only route to successful internet browsing is by buying a quad-processor monster with 4 gigabytes of RAM and a £200 graphics card along with sufficient storage to keep every picture, song and video you could ever think of owning.
Actually the comment about storage is probably not far from the truth, but will come to that later and plenty of RAM will make your PC operate faster. But knowing in advance what you want your PC to do is part of a successful computer buying strategy.
If you are an 'average' user your reasons for owning a PC will be something like
browsing the Internet;
sending and receiving email;
- writing letters and other documents using a word processor;
- using a 'chat client' like MSN or Yahoo! to talk to friends and family;
- storing photographs, music and other media downloaded to your machine;
- and the facility to play back music and video.
The PC will also be capable of playing CD and DVDs and probably of recording information to the same device to enable you back up your vital data. That's quite a reasonable list of capabilities.
That list of capabilities can be accomplished by a machine which a long way down the evolutionary scale from the quad core behemoth that that salesperson will try to persuade you to buy. More powerful machines will be capable of editing video and dealing with image manipulation of very high resolution photographs from digital cameras.
Here's a a guide to the various elements and what to look for.
Processor: The processor or CPU (central processing unit) controls the computing elements of the PC. The faster the processor the better the machine. Modern processors will often have multiple cores, ffectively two or even four processors working in one unit.
However bear in mind that for our relatively simple task list a low powered processor will do the job just as well as its top of the line brother. In fact unless you are prepared to pay top dollar for all your components, a powerful CPU alone may not result in significantly faster machine as other components could limit performance.
Key words to look for here are Pentium, Intel, Sempron and Opteron, for a faster machine look out for Core Two Duo and AMD2. In the Pentium range look out for P2 and P3 as a minimum requirement for your machine.
RAM: Random Access Memory; memory used by the computer to perform various actions. In general the more you have the better. Measured in megabytes (mb) time was when 256mb was considered a powerful system and 512mb a specialist machine.
The current Microsoft Operating System (OS) Vista requires 1gigabyte (1024mb) of RAM to work and 2gb (2056mb) is recommended. The amount of RAM you will need will be dictated by your OS but in general the more the better. RAM is easy to replace and currently not too inexpensive, so consider adding more if the budget permits it.
Motherboard: The motherboard (mobo in PC speak) links all the components of the computer, it provides a home for the CPU and is where the RAM is homed. Graphic cards and other devices which plug into the PC can also be found here. It may be straying into the world of the PC builder but its worth asking some key questions about the 'mobo' on your proposed machine.
Keywords to look out for here are PCI-Express sometimes abbreviated to PCI-E, this is a connection between the motherboard and devices like graphics cards and sound cards. It is are faster then its predecessors , PCI and AGP. In a fast machine look out for SATA connections to the hard disk drive (HDD) and DVD/CD drive again improving speed.
Hard Disk Drive (HDD): The bigger the better is the rule here, you cannot have too much storage. You may think that 80gb disk will last you, but photos and video can use up space faster than you might believe. 250gb is not usual and in some households over a terrabyte (1024gb) of storage is commonplace. If you are planning to store pictures and video, make that disk large however if your intention to write occasional emails and browse the internet you may get away with less.
Most computers will allow for the fitting of more than one disk so if cash is an issue, a smaller storage resource could be a compromise until you can afford more. Disks can be linked together in something called RAID (Random Array of Independent Disk) to either improve access speed by splitting the data across the disks or provide an automatic back up for data from one disk to another.
Graphics Card: In an expensive machine this could be the single most expensive component, the latest model retailing that more than £300. The card provids a dedicated graphic display for playing computer games and for advanced 3 dimensional representations on the monitor. On budget machines this function will be handled by the motherboard, again if all you need is our list of moderate usage then integrated or onboard graphics will do nicely.
Power Supply Unit: Probably not an issue for the average user but for a more powerful computer its important to have a decent power supply provided regulated power with no spike or surges in the supply. For an average machine a power supply of 350 – 500 watts should be more than suffient, however more powerful machines often need more wattage and 600-800 watts is not uncommon.
Monitors: There are two options here, TFT or flat screen monitors and the older CRT or TV style monitor. The TFT models are smaller lighter and take up much less space but command a higher price .CRT monitors are not much cheaper new, but if you are looking for a second hand system older CRT monitors can be had for £20-30.
If you are in the market for a flat screen look for 17 – 19 inches (measured across the screen from upper left to lower right) and expect to pay around £100 for the smaller model although high performance version can be much more.
Once you have all your component parts sorted out the next thing to consider is what operating system you will use. You may be lucky and have the OS come with the machine, but its worth bearing in mind that if at any time you need to reinstall your operating system you will need a CD or DVD with the software on it. Operating Systems such as XP and Vista need to be registered to work and legally the code can only be used on one machine at a time.
Operating Systems: The market leader here is Microsoft Windows, with Windows Vista as the latest offering, replacing Windows XP.
A list showing the evolution of the Windows Operating System is included below.
- Windows 3.1 and variants - probably the earliest offering from Microsoft likely to be found on old machines. This OS has very limited usability and no support for external USB devices and I include it here for completeness only
- Windows 95 - this system is probably about as far down the evolutionary line as you could reach without losing much of a PC's functionality. I would also not recommend it for any machine since it does not have USB support (See box out – USB for me...)
- Windows 98 – still used by many fans and widely regarded as one of the most stable versions of the Windows sotfware produced, includes full support for USB devices. Not as graphically 'pretty' as its successors but then it doesn't need all the graphics processing power either.
- Windows ME (Millennium Edition) – most repair people and computer builders regard ME as a truly abhorrent piece of software, slow and bug ridden it was avoided by many users myself included who held out for the arrival of Windows 2000. If you find it on your machine install another OS as quick as possible.
- Windows 2000 (Home and Pro Editions) – a solid and reliable operating system with decent support for networking in the Pro edition.
- Windows XP (Home and Pro Editions) initially regarded as a bit of a white elephant successive patches from Microsoft have improved this system to the point where it is widely regarded as one of the best OS's every produced.
- Windows Vista – the new player in the field. Vista appeared on the market a few months ago and although initially poorly supported by makers of peripheral devices like graphics cards and various pieces of software, this situation is improving. Although seemingly a good OS it needs a modern computer with plenty of RAM and good graphics capability to make the most of its features.
Expect to pay around £100 for Vista, around £50 for XP and £15 for Windows 2000. Bear in mind that Vista comes in several different types and if you want to see some improvement over XP you will need to be buy the Premier edition. If buying a new machine you could reasonably expect to get Premium included with your system, I would not recommend the Home Edition because it lacks all the features that Microsoft have touted as part of their Vista publicity campaign.
Other Operating Systems: although not as well known and in some cases requiring a steeper learning curve there are onther operating systems out there in particular Linux, an operating system based on programming orginally written for UNIX computing back in the early days of PCs. Linux used to be regarded as the geek operating system but recent improvements have put it within the reach of the average user. Linux variants (or distros) as they are known in the Linux community such as Ubuntu, PCLinuxOS and Fedora are easy to set up and use.
Linux is Open Source and copies of the operating system can be downloaded from the internet for free. Linux stores its programs in a responsitory, currently 22000 of them are availabe entirely for free. All you need is storage space on your computer. Most Linux distros will include software like word processing, spreadsheets, chat clients, CD/DVD players along with calendar and email functions. Its a good option for the cash strapped or as a second PC. If you have a network Linux and Windows can talk to one another through an application called 'smb'.
There we have it, a brief toe dip into the waters of computer buying. Some knowledge will definitely save you money and knowing what you want will give you an advantage when buying. In my next article I show you how to get a computer up and running on the internet for less than £100 pound including all the software.
Ron Cook
info@wanderjahre.co.uk
