Purchasing a new computer is an important decision. It is a purchase on which you will spend a lot and if you’re like most of us, you’ll be living with your purchase for quite a while. Here are a few tips on what to consider.
A computer purchase is one which you should think about carefully. It is a major purchase and you want to get it right, since you probably will not be able to run right out and get another one right away if you fail to buy the right system the first time. For a lot of people, it will be the second or third largest expense in any given year, and you will probably be using it for at least two years.
Probably the first decision you need to make is whether of not you need to be mobile: do you need a desktop or a laptop? A few years ago, the laptop was in the minority, mainly a tool of the business traveller. For the last couple of years, laptops have outsold desktops due to their increased power and decreased price, not to mention their portability. We tend to want to take our computer with us when we leave home. There are even a lot of laptops now that make decent gaming machines, at least for the less-than-hardcore gamer.
Still, most laptops are a bit more expensive than an equivalent desktop machine, especially given that you will probably be buying a monitor, keyboard and mouse regardless of which type of system you get. You can probably also get more and more varied components in a desktop, and a desktop will be your only real choice if you decide to buy the parts and assemble your own computer. You will have to weight the convenience of a portable computer against the cost savings and wider variety available with a desktop.
After that, it depends on how you plan to use the computer and what hardware is required to support your expected usage. Here are some rough guidelines that may prove useful in selecting the right system, bearing in mind that you will need a gigabit Ethernet card and/or a 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi card, at least a midlevel multipurpose DVD reader-writer, and 2-4 USB 2.0 ports built in.
Simple home system- This is a system to be used primarily for email, text processing, and surfing the web, and other general home purposes, with no heavy graphics or gaming planned. You’ll need a 1.5 to 2 GHz processor with a single core, 1-2 GB of memory, a modest video card, and a 100-150 GB hard disk and a basic Windows operating system.
Home office or small business system- This system would be used for all of the purposes of the simple home system, plus moderate graphics usage, word processing and spreadsheets, and perhaps other business software. You will want a 2+ GHz processor, 2-4 GB of memory , 200-400 GB of hard disk, a higher-end video card, and a home premium or basic business level Windows operating system.
High-end gaming or media system- This systems could be used for all of the purposes of the small business system, but will add specialty uses, such as high-end interactive gaming, complex graphics creation, or moderate video editing. This will be a much more expensive system, and will have a 2.5-3.5 GHz processor, 4-16 GB of memory, 1+ terabytes of fast (10,000 rpm) hard disk, a very high-end video card with a lot of on-board memory, and a professional-level operating system. This is also more likely to be a desktop system, since the specs begin to outstrip what you can reasonably buy in a laptop.
There is also one other rule of thumb to keep in mind. The experts often say to purchase all of the computer you can afford and they are right. Moore’s Law guarantees that your computer will be out of date in a year or less and hopelessly out of date for any but the simplest uses in 2-3 years. The closer your new system is to the state of the art on the date of purchase, the longer it will be before it is outmoded. However, avoid the very bleeding edge, both because it is more expensive and because it is more prone to failure.
