Knowing Computer Hardware from Buying

Knowing Computer Hardware from BuyingThe first thing you should be aware of when buying a computer is that vendors and computer people dont use English to describe computers. They use a great deal of jargon that you need to be able to translate into English if you are to make an informed decision when buying a new computer. The next thing to know is that any computer you buy will be technologically obsolete in, at most, two years. What does technologically obsolete mean? It means that two years after you buy a computer, computers will be better, faster and less expensive. Technology is evolving so fast that there is no way around this. But we didnt just say obsolete because you dont need to update to the newest technology day by day to have a computer that serves your needs. Although the computer is, by all reasonable standards, obsolete, it still performs all the functions you need it for at home with reasonable speed and efficiency. So what does this all mean? First, that it is near impossible to wait for the right computer to come down in price because by then, someone will tell you that the computer youve been waiting for is, you guessed it, obsolete. And they wont be lying. Second, you can get a computer that will fulfill all your needs for a reasonable price now. Of Pentiums and 486s, of SXs, DXs and MHzThe first words out of the mouth of vendors will usually be one, or a combination of, the words above. They refer to the processor speed and strength. Thus youll hear this is a 486DX, 66 megahertz or its a 133 megahertz Pentium or This one? Oh, well, its a fantastic deal for a 286SX/24. The processor (a.k.a. Central Processing Unit or CPU) is the part of the computer that does all the work. For most people, the most important quality of the processor is its speed which is related to its strength. Early (not dawn of time early, but early enough for our purposes) computers had 286 processors. 386s replaced those and were top of the line for a while, until 486s came out. Now the top of the line is the Pentium (since pent is Latin for five, it makes a little sense). The numbers arent important to understand (and in fact, often youll see the whole number which looks like 80286, 80386, etc. usually we just chop off the 80). Just know that you don t want a 486, but youd be best off with a Pentium. DX/SX refers to whether the computer has a math coprocessor that allows the computer to do certain things better. If you are faced with a choice, go with the DX and note, SX machines may not even be available anymore. At this point you should just avoid getting an SX. And note, Pentiums do not use the DX/SX lingo. A Pentium is a Pentium. So if you get a Pentium you can avoid this whole paragraph. Megahertz (MHz) is the label for speed. Again, understanding isnt as important as just knowing that the bigger the numbers, the better. You will be upset by how slow a 200MHz is, and amazed by how fast a 700MHz is. The lesson here is faster is better. One note on brand names try to get a machine that says Intel Inside. That is referring to the Intel brand microchip. These are very common, popular and reliable. If you dont see anything that tells you what type of chip is inside, it is worth asking the vendor if the processor is an Intel chip. It is safest to stick with Intel. RAM The God of MemoryLikely to be the next words out of our friendly vendors mouth are the words Its got megs of RAM. What the vendor is referring to is memory. A quick lesson on memory is helpful here: Basically, there are only two kinds of memory: RAM and the hard drive. Imagine RAM as your desktop that you work on, and the hard drive as your file cabinet across the room. RAM lets your computer handle chunks of information and work with them. More RAM means the computer can handle more work and data at once. Less RAM means the computer has to do large tasks in small chunks, which slows everything down. Imagine you have a very small desk, and you want to build a huge model ship. Since your desk isnt big enough to hold all the parts and the in-progress construction, youll have to work on one part of the model, then take it off to work on another part. Thus itll slow you down. Now imagine that you went out and got a huge desk that holds the entire model, and all the parts, and all your tools. Now you can work much faster, being able to see everything, and having everything at your fingertips. The small desk is to a small amount of RAM, and the big desk is analogous to like a lot of RAM. Now imagine that you like to keep all your finished models, all your new models, pictures of all your models, and model magazines. Youll keep them in the file cabinet. If you have a big cabinet, you can store a lot of your model things. If not, you have to throw stuff out. This file cabinet represents your hard drive. It stores everything your computer contains. Once its full, you must either throw some things out (by deleting them from the hard drive) or get a new hard drive. Take one last thing from this analogy. Having a big cabinet does not help you if your desk is too small. Similarly, once your cabinet is full, its full regardless of how big your desk is. Same goes for RAM and the hard drive. The biggest hard drive in the world wont substitute for having a small amount of RAM, and all the RAM in the world wont help a full hard drive. So, our friendly vendor said Its got megs of RAM. When he says megs what she means is megabytes (which is written MBs). Here again, the key is the size of the number. When you buy software, most likely it will tell you how much RAM it requires to run (therell be a tiny patch of information on the side of the box). If you dont have enough, you cant run the program. If the program asks for 32 and you have 16, youre out of luck. And if you have just enough to run a program, you will notice it runs much slower than if you have twice as much (remember the desk analogy). The moral here is that there is no cure for a lack of RAM other than more RAM. The nice thing is that you can add RAM to your computer at a later date. Unlike hard drives, you can just plug in more RAM (most computers will have a maximum limit to the RAM they can have, but often that limit is higher than most users could ever need). Unfortunately, RAM is not cheap, so try to get as much as you can afford in the beginning. Hard drives are simple: bigger is better. Again, the relevant term is MBs (although now, gigs, GBs, or gigabytes is becoming standard). One MB is one million bytes. One GB is one billion. A good word processor may take up 15-20MBs. If you use a lot of graphics (e.g. picture files), three elaborate pictures may take up 1 MB. Trust me, it adds up fast. CD ROM and other DrivesCD ROMs are standard. Youll be hard pressed to find a new computer without one. If you do, you should factor in the cost of buying a CD ROM into the purchase price because most software products are released on CDs now (a trick is that the CDs come out with more features and add-ons than the same software released on floppy disks). The question is speed. CD ROMs are measured in multiples 24x, 48x, etc. Currently, there are only two or three other drives you may hear about (drives are the devices that you insert diskettes of different varieties into). The first is 3-1/2 floppy. This is for the little square diskettes, and is standard on all computers, and most software is released in that format for now (the trend is to abandon 3-1/2 disks in favor of CDs, so dont be surprised if they are abandoned by manufacturers completely in three to 4 years). The next is called a tape-drive. This is specifically for backing-up your entire hard drive (which means saving the entire contents of the hard drive to a special tape). Most people do not need one of these. In fact, most people will never find a time when they even want it. Last there is the 5-1/4 floppy the real McCoy, the floppy. Nothing is released on these and no new computers should have them installed. If you have old software on these kinds of floppies, copy it off them, and throw them away. The latest drives are zip-drives, DAT tape drives, and drives for disks that can hold 100 MBs of information. None of these will be standard for some time because companies are still fighting to develop the Next Supreme Disk. Modem and Ethernet CardThe modem is a big feature because of the Internet. If you want on the Internet, you need a modem. More important for you, if you want dial-in access to internet, you need a modem. Modems take messages from your computer to another computer, and bring messages back. The faster your modem, the faster this happens. Modems are referred to by numbers that represent speed (more or less; dont worry about the technical aspect of what the numbers mean). The early ones were 1200 (and the designation that follows, bps or baud, is unimportant for our purposes). Later came 2400, then 9600, more recently 28,800, and most recently 56,000. Faster is better. The interesting thing about modems is that no matter how fast your modem, if you connect to a computer with a slower modem, the session (a code word for the things you do when you are connected to something by way of your modem) will run as fast as the slowest of the two modems. E.g. if you have a 28.8 and connect to a computer which has a 14.4, the session will run like both computers have 14.4. You may also have the choice between an external or internal modem. This is not really a big issue for you. If you want to save desk space, go internal. If you like to see the gadget and the status lights, get an external. There wont be a loss in performance between the two. Less important to general users is the ethernet card. Whereas a modem tells your computer how to talk to another computer over a phone line, an ethernet card tells your computer how to act like a computer on a network. At present, you need a modem to dial-in and access your email and some other internet services. An ethernet card would allow you to bring a laptop into the school, plug it into the network and act just like one of the desktop computers already in the school. Complicated? Monitor and other devicesFor monitors, the magic words are SVGA, and BIG. Monitors are interesting creatures because they come with their own world of designations, letter combinations that follow the name, and other confusing information. What do you want? First, color, of course. SVGA might as well mean pretty colors! VGA will also do the trick, by not as nicely as SVGA. CGA means not pretty colors, so avoid it if you ever see it. Bigger will cost you more money LOTS more money and will take up more space LOTS more space. 15 is pretty standard. The other big whistles and bells add-on is multimedia which is a general term used to refer to a lot of things: mainly sound, but also gadgets that let you take pictures, record video movies, record and edit sounds, and all kinds of other stuff. But the thing that is likely to come with a computer, and something you should look for to add a little fun to the computer, is the sound card. 16-bit sound cards are common. These allow your computer to make some pretty amazing noises, and also allow nice quality playing of music CDs, etc. PrintersIts hard to sum up the printer world, but we can at least direct you about a few things. First, they arent cheap. Happily, though, they are coming down in price like the rest of the computer world. In addition, they are starting to take on double and triple duties e.g. they now make printers that can also do photocopying, faxing and scanning (turning pictures into computer files). Next, you can choose between color and black and white. Color slows printers down, and the majority of people dont need it. The cartridges are going to cost you more and will probably run out faster too. Unless you know youre going to do a lot in color, black and white should be enough. One of the key factors is speed. When youre down to the last minute before your paper is due, you dont want to be printing on a printer that can only print one page every two minutes particularly when your papers are 30 to 40 pages long. Look for at least four pages per minute. Probably the most impact this decision will have is on price. Bubble jet printers print a fine quality probably not very noticeable when compared to laser printers. But the prices will be quite different. Youd be well served by viewing your printer decision as having a bit more permanence than the computer itself i.e. think a bit more long-term. Some Laser printers cost two times bubble jets. Expansion bays, slots, ports and towersIf you ever wanted to add one of the cool new drives, or just a tape drive, your computer needs to have an open drive bay. Most computers should come with extra drive bays (i.e. ones with nothing in them); Dont settle for just one. Two should be very common. There are also expansion slots. These are places to put expansion cards. Some things that require expansion cards are new drive types, multimedia gadgets, etc. Again, computers are sure to have at least one, likely two. Try to get three, but dont pay too much to do so. Ports are places to plug things into the back of your computer. There are parallel, serial, ps2, and so on. Whatever you are likely to need, the computer will have it. Its doubtful you will find a computer with too few ports. At the end of this, well list some things,