Number 225 - February 2002

What To Look For In A New Computer
by Jeanne Dunn
I have been around computers for a whole lot of years, but when I went to buy one for myself, I was totally lost as to what to get.     When I saw the prices my heart skipped a good many beats. But I wanted One!!!     Some of the dressing on the systems was just so beautiful I had a hard time seeing beyond it. And all the tech. nical language, that came written all over the front of the box, called specs, was very foreign to me. Like CPU, what on earth is a CPU? I learned it was a processor. Now, what is a processor? Well it is the brain of the whole complicated looking system that in spite of the great excitement in me could set off panic in the strongest of us. How in the name of Computer World do I choose the right CPU?     At the time, there were not so many choices for me, and I thought I had done right until I got my second Computer. Now I knew what to look for. And this time I found out that it was the difference between how fast my computer would run, and how smoothly.     Staying in contact with the rest of the computer world I learned more, I read more, I compared more and figured out what was best for me. I admit, we all do not need the best but I was not about to settle here, not when I had a choice.     I learned the difference between compatible and trouble. Just as I found from others that I needed to help download fixes because one computer company using an AMD modem would not work with the USB Port and Windows 98 Second Edition, and they had to	post a fix on their web site to download to work with it. Well, I guess that may not bother some people to go to all that trouble. Well, there wasnt all that much difference in the money and maybe that was why the price of the computer was more than the one with lesser brains. I suppose cheaper sometimes is better. What would I know about cheaper? I never did look at price tags. I realize one thing, if you are going to have a good team you really have to have a good brain to lead it. Do not settle for less than the best in the CPU. This was my priority of picking out the right computer.     Next came the hard drive. Of course we have to have a place to store all our data along with the operating system (Windows 98 SE in my case). How do we choose the right hard drive? Well this one is easy. Get a good deal on a popular one with as much space as possible for the money you want to spend. I went for Gigabytes. I asked people I knew what their hard drive was and how much trouble it gave them. This I found really doesnt cause too much of a problem until you come up short of space as when mine, one day, displayed this huge warning You Have No Space Left On Your Hard Drive. I checked and found only 27 Megabytes left. Oh No!!! Where did it all go?     Fortunately for me I had a partitioned drive, so I did not have to run out and buy a new one. A partitioned drive is one very large drive I had with almost 28 Gigabytes separated into smaller GBs. I still had to do a format of my drive and wipe out all the programs and documents I had saved there. I did not mind that so much, but I guess I could have looked ahead and made sure I would not have trapped myself like that.
Number 225 - February 2002