How To Buy A Computer
Most
“brand” computers do not make a big deal of which
components they
use and the lower to average priced pre-built PCs use generic
or poor quality hardware.
And hardware that is often obsolete or about to become obsolete.
Most
chain stores do not conduct repairs themselves. Your computer will be
sent
to a 3rd party service department, which is likely to take weeks, and
it is difficult to assess the skill of the service people when you
can’t see or
talk to them.
The "Interest Free" Myth
Many of the national chain stores advertise "Interest Free" deals. We don't. We have our reasons:
# There's no such thing as Interest Free: the cost of the interest has already been added to the price.
We do not think it is ethical to raise prices to cover the shortfall in payment from finance companies.
# Most Finance companies offer "rebates" to stores: they pay the retailer to encourage customers to sign HP deals.
Buying
from a computer shop
You
will get helpful, professional people who are
good at explaining technical information in an understandable fashion.
They
will be able to assist you in making the right choice in computer
selection and will conduct repairs at their own shop.
Look
for quality brand components - Motherboard,
Hard Drive, Monitor, Graphics. Don't compare donkeys with racehorses.
You
can ensure you get good, name brand hardware components in the system
which will have proper
manufacturer support and driver support. Most importantly, you can
ensure you
get hardware that will perform.
After sales support.
This is sadly lacking from chain-stores and often even from some
Computer shops. Get references where-ever possible, do you really want
to be calling an 0800 number and speaking to an undereducated street
urchin in India who will try to read off his help-sheet various
analytical computing concepts over a crackly voip connection that was
configured with not quite enough bandwidth?
What you should get is help at hand whenever you may encounter
something odd or confusing with your computer. If you are new to
computers then you will need help at some stage and you will want
someone helpful and friendly at the other end.
SHould you be replacing or upgrading a PC, transferring your old data across will be part and parcel of the new purchase.
Warranty
On
pre-built PCs, there is typically only a 1 year warranty on the whole
system, and in many instances, you are offered an extended service plan
at the
time of purchase. These extended warranties omit support for all
components and have a number of Opt out clauses built in to them. All
component manufacturers offer their own warranty
on parts
and with quality components this is between 3 to 10 years.
LAPTOPS
Disadvantages:
Some parts, such as hard drives and memory are commodity
items and are interchangeable. However, other parts such as motherboards,
keyboards, and batteries are proprietary in design and are only interchangeable
within a manufacturers brand and/or model line.
Due to their portability and tight integration, laptops are
more subject to wear and physical damage than desktops. Components such as
batteries, screen hinges, power jacks, and power cords are commonly subject to
deterioration due to ordinary use. Dropping a laptop can damage the LCD screen
if not break apart its body. The repair costs of a failed motherboard or LCD
panel may exceed the purchase value of the laptop.
Advantages:
Size, they don’t take up much room. The main advantage of laptops over their larger desktop
counterparts is the inherent portability. Another advantage is the laptop's
ability to operate on battery power in the case of a power outage.
Brands:
“Name
Brand” notebooks/laptops are not always manufactured by the company on the
label. The so called "Name Brand" notebooks/laptops manufacturers
just label their own. They get them from various Original Design Manufacturers
(ODM). A few examples of ODMs are Quanta, Compal, Clevo, Mitac, Asus, Arima.
Most
ODMs sell their notebooks/laptops barebones to the different companies who then
have CPU, Memory, Hard Drive and other accessories installed at a 3rd
party factory. These companies stick their label (Brand) to it, and call
themselves manufacturers.
Their
products are then sold directly to dealers/resellers like Harvey Norman, DSE,
Noel Leeming or directly to the public (i.e. Dell). Most companies such as Dell and HP etc have their laptops assembled in Asia.
Why buy
an ASUS?
Not only is ASUS (ASUStek) ranked in the top 5 ODM companies in the
world, their reputation in quality is second to none. Quality and Quality
Control is the main reason. And they do manufacture most of the parts and
assemble them themselves.
COMPUTER COMPONENTS
Motherboard
The
motherboard is the foundation. Everything attaches to the
motherboard - the
CPU, memory, hard drive, monitor, mouse, keyboard, even additional
peripherals
like printers, scanners, and speakers. The motherboard provides support
for the
internal components and also passes information between the computer
parts. What type of motherboard is in the system is therefore
very important. Gigabyte and ASUS are the 2 best motherboard
manufacturers in the world.
CPU
The
CPU is the brain. Most of the mathematical manipulations that make
computers operate are done by the CPU. While in general the
higher the
number, the faster the CPU, this is a misleading way to compare these
days and the amount of memory or cache the CPU has significantly
affects this as well as the way they are now programmed.
Today's
entry-level CPUs use 2 cores (in effect 2 CPUS in one physical
component) and 4 cores or more are now common.
Computer
Memory
RAM
(Random Access Memory) is the part of the computer that stores
information
the computer needs while it is operating. 1 GB DDR2 is now
entry level for
memory.
Hard
Drive
It
holds the computer’s operating system. An operating system
like Windows XP uses
around four gigabytes of hard drive space. The extra space is used to
install
computer programs and to store your personal data.
80
gigabyte hard drives are entry level now, but much larger -
up to
2000Gb (or 2 Terabytes), are available. Furthermore, you can install
more than
one in a computer case for added security and convenience.
Graphics
Card
Everything
displayed on your screen is held in graphics RAM. An
integrated graphics chipset uses the system RAM, limiting the amount of
RAM
that can be used for display purposes and taking resources away from
the rest
of the system.
A
computer with a dedicated graphics card will perform better, display a
better
quality image and will not bottleneck the system.
It is
the single most important component in gaming systems.
Gaming
and Graphics Cards
For
gaming, the graphics card is the single most important component in the
PC.
If
you decide on too cheap a card, expect 6 months to 1 years decent
performance before you will be forced to upgrade again.
Spend
more and you can expect 2 to possibly even 3 years excellent
performance.
While
graphics RAM is important, this only dictates the size of the
textures the card can handle, and while a card with 256mb of
RAM can
theoretically handle larger textures it is always limited by the speed
of the
video chipset. 3
3D
performance is defined by the speed at which information can get to the
GPU
(the dedicated graphics processor unit on a modern-day 3D card). The
greater
the bandwidth, the better.
You'll
probably see more than one clock speed quoted on graphics card specs.
The core speed refers to the GPU itself, the memory clock speed is the
rate at
which data shifts between the card's RAM and the card's graphics
processor,
whilst RAMDAC (random access memory digital to analogue converter) is
the pace
at which the card can take the information it's given and output it to
the
format of your screen.
ATI
vs NVIDIA
While
there are many companies selling graphics cards the vast majority of
them
license the technology of the leading manufacturers in this field: ATI
and
NVIDIA.
The
cards from different manufacturers have strong points and weak points.
The
reality is that they are mostly invisible to the naked eye. The only
way to
compare is to benchmark them and compare the results, and it is a
matter of
personal preference unless you want maximum performance for a specific
game.
A
good resource for checking the current gaming performance of both ATI
and NVIDIA cards is
http://www.tomshardware.com/site/vgacharts/index.html
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