Hardware Recommendations

Unless you know exactly what you're looking for, it's easy for a computer salesperson to sell you more computer than you need. It's also easy to be drawn in by big numbers, without necessarily knowing what they mean.

For example, everyone will know that a 3.0 GHz processor is faster than a 2.2 GHz processor. What the salesperson frequently won't tell you, though, is that a computer with a 2.2 GHz processor can, under some very common conditions, run much faster than a computer with a 3.0 GHz processor.

Before you go thinking I'm crazy, let me fill you in a little:
Pretty much every low end computer today comes with Windows XP, and 128 MB RAM, or memory. The integrated video which they usually have uses 8 MB, or sometimes 16 MB of that 128 MB, leaving at most 120 MB for the operating system and programs.

Windows XP with a good anti-virus program usually takes somewhere around 110 MB, leaving you with at most, 10 MB for your running programs. If you get a couple more utilities installed, for example, a CD burning program, the newest control applications for nVidia and ATI graphics chips, multimedia keyboard drivers, or something as simple as an email monitor program, you'll easily be using 130 to 140 MB RAM, on a system with only 128 MB RAM installed.

How is this possible, you ask? Well, all modern operating systems, Windows included, can use hard disk space for extra memory storage when physical RAM runs out. The problem is, the hard disk is somewhere around 1/1000th the speed of RAM. That means, if your computer runs out of RAM, the fastest processor in the world isn't going to be doing anything for a long time while it waits for the hard drive to give it data that should be in memory.

For this reason, along with several others, a computer with a 2.2 GHz processor and 256 or 512 MB RAM can frequently be faster than a system with a 3.0 GHz processor and only 128 MB RAM.

Would the salesperson at the big box electronic retailer have told you that? Probably not, because it's easier to sell a computer on processor clock speed than something as mundane as memory. Everybody understands that 3.0 is better than 2.2, even if they don't know what the GHz stands for. The average consumer doesn't necessarily understand RAM, though, so it's easy to pass that off as unimportant to a novice buyer.

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Let me know what you're going to be using the computer for, and I'll give you a pretty good idea of what type of hardware you need.

As a few examples:

• No matter what Intel's commercials would have you believe, a faster processor won't give you a more intense Internet experience. Reading email and surfing the Internet takes no more than a 400 MHz processor. Today's fastest Pentium 4's are over 7 times that speed. The bottleneck for Internet access is just that....Internet access. The speed of your internet connection, even if you have cable, DSL, or a commercial T3 line, is hundreds of times slower than what your processor can manage. If you're not doing anything taxing with your computer, you don't need anything more than the slowest processor available in a new computer.
• Word processing, spreadsheets, and PowerPoint presentations are equally insignificant as far as your processor is concerned.
• 256 MB RAM is the minimum required for decent functionality with any current version of Windows. More is not necessary unless you use your computer for more than listed above. A computer which will be used for gaming, graphic design, or something similar should have 512 MB RAM, even 1 GB (1024 MB) for the most current graphics-intensive games. CAD programs can use as much memory as you can give them, so you need a motherboard that will support at least 1.5 GB, and it should be full. If you don't know what a CAD program is, you don't use one.
• Usually, the word "integrated" describing electronics means it's better than a similar "non-integrated" product. For computer components and peripherals, this is not the case. Integrated video is usually a low-end graphics chip, and most current integrated video setups use system RAM for video memory, decreasing performance of the computer itself due to lack of RAM, and decreasing performance of the graphics system due to the more technical reasons of memory timing mismatches and a lower bus speed. Integrated sound is also less than top-notch, but usually quite acceptable for non-professional audio use.
• Name brand computers - Dell, Gateway, Compaq/HP, etc. - are frequently plagued by combinations of the above problems. An unnecessarily fast processor, with limited RAM, as well as integrated video, sound, and sometimes network, on top of a lack of consistency and quality control.