Disaster strikes – You have to buy a new computer

October 12th, 2009

This is going to cost you money…

It happens to all of us. We are used to the computer we have; it does what we want exactly as we trained it and we are scared that a new computer may not behave properly. And then, of course, there’s the matter of finding un-budgeted money.

The hard part

The only really hard thing about buying a computer is choosing where to buy it. Ideally, buy from someone you trust to give you unbiased advice and the technical support you hopefully will never need.

The good news

The good news is that the entry-level or basic minimum PC these days is more than good enough for most computing tasks. These tasks include office work, fiddling with digital photography, e-mail, surfing the web and playing less involved games. The entry-level PC will be fine for those pursuits, although consider adding memory so that the machine has at least 2G of RAM. These machines are not likely to have separate network and video cards – these will be built into their motherboards and there is nothing wrong with that.

Choosing

Choosing a computer does become more complex when you want to engage in activities such as video editing, high-end gaming or advanced image manipulation, which need more resources to be viable. If you are going to be playing some of the sophisticated games, look at the requirements on the box or the leaflet of the games package. Programs, including games and video editing packages, always list the minimum requirements they need to run and often suggest configurations.

The screen

Most of the monitors available today have LCD screens. It seems the higher the contrast ratios and lower the response times, the better the screen. Take a good look at the difference between the cheaper and more expensive models – don’t be talked into buying an inferior screen simply because it’s larger.

Laptops

Choosing a laptop or notebook also seems complicated, but it also means buying a machine to suit your purposes. The most basic are the so-called Netbooks, which are fine for web surfing, some word processing or sending e-mail. Laptops have smaller screens, but make up for that with a greater battery life and enhanced portability. You have to decide if you can live with the smaller screen and keyboard. As with their desktop cousins, the entry-level notebooks are fine for just about any task and you really only need something better if you have a special requirement. Upgrade to at least 2G of RAM and a wireless networking facility built into the machine.

Operating systems

I wouldn’t buy a machine with Microsoft Vistage. Windows 7 is due out soon and I would insist on a free upgrade to that or I wouldn’t buy. I’d also consider using a Linux variant, such as Ubuntu, if I could get Linux versions of all the software I intend to use.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 12th, 2009 at 11:47 pm and is filed under Finance, Personal / Internet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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