Buying a computer

Choices

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

Windows 2000 or XP Home, or latest MacOS. Make sure OS is installed. DOS and Windows 3.1/95/98/Me are passé. Windows NT (or XP Professional) is not needed for average user. Consider Linux, either commercial or free.

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 256 MB. EDO, SDRAM, ...

Video card

Compatibility. May be a bottleneck if slow. 3-D acceleration important for some applications, including some games.

Video memory

Minimum 4 MB.

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? 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. Cable or ADSL for heavy multimedia Web browsing?

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?

Performance

Look at benchmarks but don't take them too seriously.

Last modified: Tue, 2004 Apr 27 09:54:49
Slide show generated from buying.html by Weasel 2004 Apr 27