Buying a Computer

Buying a Computer

            The first thing you should do when buying a computer is decide what you need it for. Below are some of the uses a computer can be used for in today’s world. Select the ones that best fit your needs. Just be sure to get the listed extras included for the best price and remember to buy the best you can afford at the time as this will lengthen it’s usable life span. Consumer Computers come in five types. The price ranges are just my belief of what they should cost. If you want to spend more be my guest. DON’T buy for less or you will suffer and wish you hadn’t.

• Desktops (Either a flat computer or a tower that stands up on it’s own, with a separate monitor. Price range $500-$2000+
• Pro: On average you will get better processor power and ram for the same money. (More Bang for the buck)
• Con: (Large and difficult to set up and use)
• All-in-one (Computer built into an over sized monitor so the DVD/Blu-ray drive is in the side of the monitor. Keyboard is either USB or wireless) Price range $800-$2000+
• Pro: Easy to set up, usually involving nothing more than a power cable and maybe a network (although most include wireless networking if you have a Wireless router or other wireless internet connection.)
• Con: More expensive for the given hardware power than desktops and some laptops.
• Laptop (Computers designed to give you full function (DVD/Blu-ray drive, Video out ports for projecting, Network, Wireless, webcam and full keyboard, some with 10 key) but be portable so that you can move them from place to place relatively easily. Just know that the more components and power or battery life you require the heavier the laptop gets. (some go from 3 to 10 lbs. ) Price range $500-$2000+.
• Pro: Nice to move around the house from room to room and maintain wireless connection to the internet. Nice to take on trips to empty your video or still camera’s memory card to and edit or post some of your pictures. Screen sizes come from 13 to 17 inches, with 15.6 being average and 13-14 a nice sized to carry around easily for most people.
• Con: More expensive than desktops for the same performance although usually cheaper than All-in-ones.  Battery life will be under 3 hours.
• Net-books (Super small laptops with limited functionality, most don’t have a DVD/Blu-ray drive and may not have all the others, many have slightly smaller keyboards and are hard to use for some people. Try the keyboards on demo units at the store. ) Price range $300-$600+
• Pro: Usually have EXCELLENT battery life compared to laptops, up to 10 hours in some. Usually EXCELLENT price.
• Con: The small keyboard and small screen on many of them ( range from 9.7 inches to 11). Uncomfortable typing on one for any length of time. DO NOT BUY FOR use 5 or 6 below as the low-cost processors and video processor they use are NOT up to gaming or compiling video.
• Tablets (Small digital tablets with touch screen like smartphones, just larger, usually 7-10 inch in size,) Cost $200-$1000.
• Pro: Can fulfill most of the functions 1 and parts of 2-4.  (No optical drive, typing on them is a pain unless they come with some detachable or wireless keyboard.)
• Con: Very limited processor does fine on programs designed for them though.

Uses of computers

1. Internet computer (For browsing the web and playing web games, i.e. games that launch from a web page, chatting, Skyping, etc.)
2. Multimedia (For listening to Audio, Watching DVD-Blueray’s or Netflix etc. )
3. Word Processing (For using Microsoft Office or Open Office or some similar word processor or spreadsheet program)
4. Photo Editing (For the shutter bugs out there; digital or old pictures scanned.)
5. Gaming computer (For playing the latest first person shooters or other hi-quality graphic games.
6. Video Editing (For the home or professional wannabe videographer out there)
7. Portability (For a device that might be moved around the home/office occasionally ie Laptop and need occasional internet connection when you stop to set up. )
8. Mobility (For a device that will be with you always and need internet connection at all times. )

Now look at the uses you need. If you need uses 1-4 you are in luck. Any new computer you buy will be able to fulfill your basic needs. Only if you need uses 5-6 will you have to research far more detail.  Uses 7 and 8 are determined by how you see using it. Is it going to move around the house from room to room? Then the laptop will be fine for you and give good performance. Do you need a device to stay attached to you (purse or backpack) then 8 is for you.

ONLY if you want use 5 or 6 is the following information important.

Uses 5 and 6 need FAR more of a computer than normal use. They require the greatest processor power AND also the greatest graphics performance. These can only be achieved by very carefully  reviewing your options and making the right choices.

1. The first choice is for CPU. There are many selections today for CPU and I will only talk about the Intel chips. Although the AMD are equivalent performance in general they are not sold in as many stores and if you are an AMD guru then you don’t need me to tell you which chip to buy ;-).
   1. Intel I-3 chip, It is a dual core processor that is only used for the bottom of the line of the consumer market anymore.
   2. Intel I-5 chip, it is a dual core (or some upper end models are quad-core) that is the standard chip sold in most desktops and laptops today.
   3. Intel I-7 chip, this is the one you want for these uses. More specifically all these chips come in different generations. So buy the latest available on the market. Currently it’s the 4^th generation.
   4. Between 4^th gen I-7 chips you will also find a host of processor specs, from the lowest level to the top of the line and price ranges to match. Check out http://www.cpubenchmark.net/ to compare and fine the processor ratings. NOTE that you don’t need to buy the best of the I-7’s. Most games and much software can’t use all the processor power of the top of the line chips. But they WILL soon, so get the best chip you can afford. If you look at the charts carefully aim for something that is about 75-80% of the way up the high-end performance chart for the sweet spot on price-performance.
   5. The second thing that you need to know is what video card to buy. All modern computers come with on-board video but if you are a serious gamer or Video editor you NEED a stand alone card.
      • Go to http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/ and check out the performance specs.
      • Select a card about 75-80% of the top of the High end performance chart again for the price sweet spot.
      • Buy the card you need.
      • RAM To maximize performance you should consider 8Gb s (8 Gigabytes) of ram you minimum. In general the more ram the faster your performance will be because there will be less paging (swapping programs from ram to the hard drive) 16Gb-32Gb is a better choice though and ram is fairly cheap.
      • Monitor, Get a good monitor, one with a high refresh rate (60hz or better), low refresh time (4ms), maximum colors (millions) and the highest screen resolution available. Look at some of the lower end flat screen tv’s as they now are built to be monitors as well if you want.

And finally consider your operating system. Although windows 8 is the big new OS from Microsoft it has problems for gamers and compatibility issues for other professional editing programs. Stick with windows 7 pro and need I say 64 bit ? Windows comes in 32 bit and 64 bit. You can install either on your computer but if you install 32 it will be slightly more compatible BUT will NOT really work with more than 4Gb of ram. 64 bit (x64) is really needed to use more ram efficiently.

Hey there are a million other things that you could put in but I think that’s enough for now.

If anyone wants I can include my thoughts on the major manufacturers as well. Having bought MANY computers from them all I can give you the inside scoop. ;-).