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\nBy Lee C. Sonko, Computer Consultant<\/p>\n
First, a little announcement: If you have e-mail, you should get on the PVPOA Announcements e-mail mailing list. Just go to the PVPOA.com web site (username: pvpoa, password: pvpoa) and you\u2019ll see a link to sign up. We won\u2019t give your e-mail address to any of those awful, terrible nasty people that send junk \u2018spam\u2019 email. I hate those guys too!<\/p>\n
Last month, I wrote the first of a two part series on buying a new computer. I talked about which operating system to get, CPU speed, and how much memory to get. This month, I\u2019ll round things out by telling you about different computer manufacturers, hard drive sizes, graphics cards, monitors, and about buying used.<\/p>\n
You can buy your computer from many places; there are several mail-order only companies, then there\u2019s Staples, Circuit City, and even some fine independent stores in Hackettstown. It\u2019s getting hard to buy a \u201cbad\u201d computer from a reputable dealer any more, but you can spend money on things you don\u2019t need, or forget to get what you do. Plan it out. Don\u2019t buy what you guess <\/strong>you might need. Instead, find out what software you need (which will be a substantial financial investment as well!) and buy a computer that has parts that work well with the software. My favorite dealer is Dell, but some people don\u2019t like their mail-order-only nature. And to be honest, it is sometimes difficult to understand the accents of many of their customer service reps. It\u2019s hard to find a retail dealer that can sell as good a product at their price though. From my experience, Apple Computer\u2019s customer service is terrific.<\/p>\n Buying a high-end computer will probably give it enough \u201chorsepower\u201d to keep up with contemporary uses for about five years. An inexpensive computer might be good for four years, but then again, maybe ten if you don\u2019t need it to do anything fancy.<\/p>\n How much hard drive do you need? To answer that, I need to know what you\u2019re going to do with the computer. If you\u2019re surfing the web and reading email, You can get by on three gigabytes (the smallest hard drive they sell today is twenty gigabytes!). If you will be editing videos or any of a myriad of other things, you might need one hundred gig or more. So I can\u2019t tell you how much to get. The cost of a gigabyte of hard drive space has cut in half every eighteen months for the last ten years or so. So if you can wait a year to buy that larger hard drive, you\u2019ll save some money.<\/p>\n The \u201cBus speed\u201d of a computer is often touted around. But I think you should just about ignore this statistic. From any reputable dealer, the bus speed will be appropriate for the computer and it won\u2019t make all that much difference anyway. I could explain exactly what bus speed means, but it wouldn\u2019t really help you.<\/p>\n Graphics cards are a huge issue for some folks and a non-issue for others. If you are planning on playing one of those hot new 3-D games, then you\u2019ll want to pay attention to this. If you don\u2019t care much about games, then just use the standard video card that the computer comes with. Every month or two there is a new \u201cbest\u201d card so I\u2019d be hard pressed to suggest exactly which one to buy. $100 will get a pretty good card, and the view on your screen with a $400 card will knock your socks off and wash them for you!<\/p>\n You can save some money if you buy a used computer. But buying used can easily be more hassle than it\u2019s worth. An inexpensive new computer with a warrantee and all-new software costs about $400 while a used machine might cost $200. Unless you know exactly what you\u2019re looking for, that $200 might be money thrown out the windows. If you\u2019re not sure, you should probably leave buying used to someone else.<\/p>\n The monitor, keyboard and mouse are, in many ways, the most important parts of your computer. Those are the things you actually see and touch every day! It\u2019s hard to find a bad keyboard. I\u2019ve used a lot of awful mice in my day; spend the extra $30 on the \u201cgood\u201d mouse. You\u2019ll be rewarded every single day.<\/p>\n The monitor is the second most expensive part of the computer but it\u2019s often virtually ignored until the last minute. If you\u2019re going to use this computer often, get the best monitor you can afford. There are two types of monitors, LCD and CRT. The LCD flat panel screens are great. They\u2019re easier on the eyes, fit in smaller spaces and they\u2019re stylish to boot. They\u2019re also three times the price of a comparable old fashioned CRT monitor. To choose, you should go to a computer store and stare at them for a while. I bought a 19\u201d LCD from Neovo for $600 a few months ago. That\u2019s a lot of money but I spend a lot of productive time in front of it. It makes me happy. And that\u2019s what\u2019s most important about all of this computer stuff. It should make you happy. If it doesn\u2019t, send it back!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Click Here By Lee C. Sonko, Computer Consultant First, a little announcement: If you have e-mail, you should get on the PVPOA Announcements e-mail mailing list. Just go to the PVPOA.com web site (username: pvpoa, password: pvpoa) and you\u2019ll see a link to sign up. We won\u2019t give your e-mail address to any of those […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-click-here-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1798"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1798\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}