Today, there are many choices of computers out there. Variations of processors, memory sizes, types and speeds of memory, motherboards, different manufactures of them, drive types, wattages, power output, energy saver. These many terms will stumble you while buying a computer, but you don’t have to let them confuse you. This is not a tutorial on how to make a computer, but if your going retail, which one to choose.

Marketing schemes are the things you should have your heads-up for. Manufactures like Dell may have ways to seduce on buying that new machine for friends or family, and I don’t care how fast they say it will be for “extreme gaming” or “business use”, its up to you the consumer to choose right.

Many manufactures use terms not everyone is aware of… I’m going to get a computer with 1 GB of shared memory. I don’t know what shared is but it doesn’t sound too bad, and the way they advertise this computer makes it seem one of the best. Consumers are immediately fooled with terms they don’t know, and because the retailers know that we don’t know, we will be fooled and get a computer half as good as we thought it would be.

There are some of the popular computer manufactures logos. Each one has a different marketing scheme, some for and some against their consumers intelligence. Depending on what you want to get for the best bang for the buck is up to you. Now before I ramble on more and more, and make this page longer than my Basics of HTML Coding (JOKING!!!) post, I will start with the beef.

Computers mainly rely on two things. The processor and memory. When choosing to buy a good computer, you note the size of the memory and the speed and brand of the processor. For processor choice we have AMD and Intel. Although Dell is coming up with a breed of AMD desktops and notebooks, we still need to determine how much memory are we getting out of it.

Ask yourself these questions when buying a computer:

1. What am I going to be using this computer for?
2. How much do I want to spend?
3. Will I be using this daily, weekly, monthly? How often?

By doing this you can determine what you want to get of a computer, and rely in your knowledge and not the slogans.

Its almost like talking religion when I mention processor manufactures, like AMD and Intel. I will not state my opinion on this because it is: 1. constantly changing. 2. extremely controversial.

AMD Benefits: Used for multi-tasking, business/office use, good in workstations, enthusiasts, gaming and 3D processing.
Intel Benefits: Also good at multi-tasking, home/school (not 100% good for office / database), only expensive models are good with games.

Choosing a processor also consider the speed. At the time and place of today I would get nothing less than 2.2 GHz.

Memory, common word… right? Todays world with Windows Vista on the streets (which isn’t anything to flabbergast me) and all these memory inefficient 3rd party applications its safe to get 1 GB at least. Keep an eagles eye out for key schemes. Things you will find in newspaper and magazines with a * should now tell you LOOK HERE, LOOK AT THE * AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PAGE. There is something going on here! Buying a computer with less than 1 GB memory isn’t going to be up-to-date for any bit long.

Although I’m cutting this guide “short”, there isn’t much more I can say except to attempt to guide you (the consumers) to a legitimate pathway on the market.

Dont forget, if you do not know what something is do not ignore it! Call someone, ask someone… what this means! It may end up being the product you didn’t expect.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 13th, 2006 at 5:54 am and is filed under Other.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.