Family and friends will often ask me to spec a computer out for them and I'm usually pretty happy to help. (I'm even happier to help if there are margaritas or baked goods involved!) I ask about their usage and what they would like to do on their new machine, head out on an Internet journey, and come back with something that is reasonably priced, will do everything they need, and has plenty of room to expand. Almost 100% of the time, they reply to me with some link for some outrageously beefed up machine, that costs twice as much as the one I found for them. That poor computer will probably need a prescription for antidepressants when its 16 gigs of ram and 8 processors are frittered away on watching YouTube videos of kittens and playing online Scrabble. Picture grandma buying a Ferrari to drive 8 blocks to church on Sunday. Get the picture?
Now before you can decide what you need, let's start by learning what some of these computer stats mean. Here are the three biggies. Knowing what they are and what they do, should make your shopping process a bit easier:
Hard Drive: Your hard drive is where all of your information is stored. To get an idea of how much space you might need, we can take a look at what you're using. There are a few ways of doing this, for example, Windows XP you can open up My Computer, right click on your C drive and select properties. As you can see from the image, I'm almost using the entire capacity of my 150 gig hard drive. I could use an upgrade. When I make my purchase, I'll go for something that's at least 300 gigs. If you're only using 32 gigs of your 200 gig drive, you probably don't need a terabyte (1000 gigs) of space but if that's what floats your boat, I'm not going to judge you.RAM (Random Access Memory): This is your computer's memory. How much RAM you have will dictate things like how many applications you can have running at once, and how quickly your computer will respond to you. I'm currently on an older machine with 2 gigs of RAM. I play World of Warcraft, blog, surf, and do everything I need to do just fine. An upgrade would be lovely, but I'm not hurting for one. I'd say for standard use, there's not much need for more than 4 gigs of RAM.
Processor or CPU (Central Processing Unit): Think of it as the brain of your computer. Your brain makes your hand move when you request it, and the CPU interprets the requests you make of your computer and carries them out. These can be a bit trickier to navigate. Personal computers used to have one CPU. Now, most of them have the option for multi-core (dual core, quad core, etc.) CPUs. This basically means they've taken multiple CPU's and fused them together to make one mega CPU. It's pretty cool stuff. You don't need an 8 core CPU, but because the CPU tends to be one of the harder components to upgrade yourself, if you're a novice, I'd suggest going for a dual or quad core processor if you can afford it.
Common sense should play a factor in your decision making process as well. For example, if you're buying a laptop and plan to keep it with you all the time, remember that a super, ultra, monster, mega 20inch screen laptop is going to be heavy and hard to carry around. Do you really need something the size of a coffee table to update your Facebook profile on your way to work? You may want to consider buying yourself a desktop for that rich, video experience and then purchasing a much simpler and smaller laptop or nice smart phone for travel. This sounds expensive, but technology in smaller packages is expensive. You can get all the stats of a $2500 laptop, in probably about a $1000 desktop. This leaves you quite a bit left over for something more light weight to travel with.
There's a lot more information to cover, and we'll get to it all eventually! But this should get you started on your road to moderately priced technology bliss.
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