Basic Computer Notions Buying a computer

Why?

Why are you buying a computer?
Why now?
What software do you want to use?

How much?

How much are you willing to spend?

What to buy?

Desktop or laptop?
PC or Mac?
What brand? From a local store or on-line?

Whom can you ask for advice when buying?
For support afterwards?

Read ads and reviews in magazines and papers, and on Web sites, to get an idea of what's available. For example, free monthly papers include HUB: Digital Living (available on-line at HUBCanada.com) and Québec Micro!.

See also the ZDNet Buying Guides.

Many manufacturers also have Web sites, and some allow you to price various options, e.g., MDG, Dell.

Choices

Manufacturer
Different reputations, different qualities. ‘Business’ product lines vs. ‘consumer’ product lines (cf. FAQ).
CPU chip
Entry level is something like an 2-GHz Intel Pentium 4 or Celeron (comparison). Or Pentium 4-M or M. ‘Centrino’ includes Pentium M, wireless and sophisticated power management. There are also Intel-compatible chips from AMD. And Macs. Note that clock speeds are not a good measure of processor power.
Cache size
At least 256 KB. Some low-level machines come with no cache, which significantly reduces performance.
Motherboard? Chipset? System BIOS?
Important with respect to reliability and compatibility, but it's very hard to keep up with the choices available. Buy a reputable brand and hope they've made sensible design decisions.
Operating system
Is OS installed? Windows XP Professional is more expensive, but the networking capabilities of XP Home have been crippled so it can't interact well within, e.g., a campus network, and it doesn't work as well with VPN. Some people report problems with XP Home and routers for home networks. Features in XP Pro but not XP Home (according to Microsoft): remote access; offline files and folders; support for dual processors (and dual core?); encrypted file system; better access control; centralised administration on a domain; multilingual user interface. Consider U*x, either commercial or free, e.g., Debian GNU/Linux; Mac OS X is a flavour of U*x.
Bundled software
Often MS Office, whether you want it or not. Some vendors offer Corel Office (WordPerfect suite). OpenOffice.org is free.
RAM
At least 512 MB. EDO, SDRAM, DDR …
Video card
Compatibility. May be a bottleneck if slow. 3-D acceleration important for some applications, including some games. Amount of video memory?
Monitor
Minimum 15", 17" is more common. Quality is important. Refresh rate at least 70 Hz at a reasonably high resolution. Minimum resolution 1024x768. For really serious use, 19" CRT or 17" LCD panel. Look for Energy Star compliance and power management.
Hard disk
Ultra ATA/33/66/100/133? EIDE? 4200, 5400 or 7200 rpm? Buffer size 2-8 MB? SCSI is faster but a lot more expensive. 40 GB is common. Well-known manufacturers include IBM, Maxtor, Quantum, Seagate, Western Digital, etc.
CD-ROM drive
Speed at least 8x, usually 40x or more. Maybe CD-RW, DVD, DVD-RW, ...?
Modem
56 Kbps for dial-up networking.
Network
Ethernet 10/100 Mbps network card
Sound card
Integrated or premium? Woofers and tweeters?
Removable storage
Standard 1.44-MB diskette. Also something like Zip drive (100-200 MB)? USB drive? CD burner?
Battery
For laptop, battery life? second battery? (How to prolong lithium-based batteries)
Performance
Look at benchmarks but don't take them too seriously.

After-sales support

Printer

Internet Service Provider

Handheld

Bacon home page
R. Funnell

Last modified: Sat, 2006 Aug 12 17:18:12