ComputerBob's Guide To Buying A PC

by ComputerBob

August 14, 1999

Last Updated January 30, 2001

Introduction

People constantly ask me for advice on buying a computer. I wrote this document to explain what their choices are when buying a PC, as well as to give some general recommendations for what to buy. It is not meant to answer every question, or to recommend any one particular brand or model of PC. It will, however, describe what I believe are the most imporant things to look for when buying a new PC.

CPU (Central Processing Unit)

The CPU is the "main brain" of your PC. Older CPUs include the 8088, 8086, 80286, 80386, 80486, Pentium, and Pentium II processors. As of this writing, the newest CPUs are Pentium III ("Pentium 3") processors. Each CPU is designed to run at a specific speed - the faster the speed at which the CPU runs, the faster the CPU can run your software. For example, the 8088 CPU in the original IBM PC ran at a little over 4 Megahertz (abbreviated 4MHz, it stands for 4 million beats per second). Since then, CPUs have gotten faster and faster. The newest Pentium III processors run at 600MHz (600 million beats per second!). Soon, CPUs will run at 1000MHz and above.

It makes sense that as operating systems (like Windows 98, Windows NT, and Windows 2000) and software applications (like Microsoft Word, Internet Explorer, and Doom) become more powerful and user-friendly, they require your PC's CPU to do more work, in order to process all of those new graphics, sounds, features, etc. With all the extra work your PC's CPU has to do, your PC will run really slowly (take a long time to do things) if it doesn't have a pretty fast CPU. And, even if your PC's CPU is fast enough to run today's operating systems and software, it may not be fast enough to run tomorrow's. For example, less than 2 years ago, I bought a new PC with a Pentium II CPU, running at 266MHz. At the time, it was the fastest PC you could buy. Now, less than 2 years later, ENT (Enterprise Networking) magazine announced that the upcoming Windows 2000 operating system will require a minimum of a Pentium II CPU, running at 266MHz, in order to even run at all! If I had bought anything less than the fastest processor I could have bought at the time I bought my PC, my PC wouldn't have even met the minimum requirements for running a new operating system 2 years later! If I were buying a new PC today, I'd look for the best price I could find on a PC with the very fastest CPU on the market. However, for those who are more price-conscious, the second-fastest CPU will always be almost as fast as the very fastest CPU, but it will be cheaper than the premium-priced fastest CPU.

RAM (Random Access Memory)

RAM is the "chip memory" of your PC. It is memory contained in little banks of memory chips that are plugged into the main circuit board inside your PC. The capacity of RAM memory is expressed in terms of megabytes (millions of bytes), as in 16MB or 32MB or 128MB. More megabytes of RAM means more memory in which to run big software applications. Think of RAM as short-term memory. Your PC would not be able to do anything at all if it didn't have any RAM memory, because everything your PC does has to be in RAM while it is being worked on in order for the CPU to be able to see it and process it.

Here's a little explanation of how RAM works: Let's say you have a huge reference library in your house, with thousands of books, full of information about everything in the world. One of your friends calls you up and asks you "What was the average yearly income for 20-year-old shepherds in Tibet in 1949?" Do you already know the answer? Of course not. The answer to your friend's question is not in your RAM (short-term) memory. So, you go to your huge reference library and look up the answer to your friend's question. Then you repeat to yourself, "$246, $246, $246, $246", so you'll remember it as you call up your friend and tell them the answer to their question. The whole time you're repeating "$246" to yourself, the answer to your friend's question is in your RAM (short-term) memory. Once you've called your friend and told them the answer to their question, you'll probably forget it (flush it out of your RAM) so that you'll have room to remember other short-term things. Similarly, when you turn on your PC, your operating system (Windows 98, Windows 2000, etc.) is loaded from your PC's hard drive (which is permanent storage, like your reference library) into your PC's RAM (short-term memory), where it has to stay the whole time you're using your PC, because it tells your PC how to display things on your monitor, how to "listen" to the things you type on your keyboard, how to print things, how to open and save files, and thousands of other tasks. As long as the operating system is in RAM, your PC will know how to be a PC, instead of just an expensive metal box full of chips and wires. So, you might ask, why don't we just load our PC's operating system into RAM once and for all and leave it there, instead of having to wait for it to reload into RAM every time we turn on our PC? That's a very good question! The answer is because RAM is only short-term memory -- RAM needs a constant flow of electricity in order to be able to remember things -- so if you take away that electricity, RAM immediately forgets everything it was ever told. For example, if you spend 5 hours typing a letter to someone, that letter is in your PC's RAM the whole time you're typing it, but if your electricity goes off, even for a fraction of a second, your PC's RAM will immediately forget the whole letter, and you'll have to start it all over again! That's why, every few minutes, you should save whatever you're doing to permanent storage, like the computer's hard drive (see hard drive below). Permanent storage will remember your work even when you shut down your PC, or even if the electricity goes off in the middle of what you're doing.

It makes sense that as operating systems and software applications become more powerful and user-friendly, they take up more RAM when they are loaded into RAM from your PC's hard drive. If you want to run several software applications at the same time (like word processing, email, and Internet browsing), your PC has to have enough RAM to be able to hold its operating system and all of the applications that you're running, all at the same time. If you don't have enough RAM to hold something, it will refuse to load and run. For example, less than 2 years ago, I bought a new PC that came with 32MB of RAM. At the time, Windows 95 required 16MB of RAM in order to run, but everyone knew that 32MB of RAM made it run faster. So, after I bought my PC, I immediately upgraded its RAM to 96MB, thinking that I would then have plenty of RAM memory, even for the future. Now, less than 2 years later, ENT (Enterprise Networking) magazine announced that the upcoming Windows 2000 operating system will require a minimum of 128MB of RAM in order to run! And of course I'll need even more RAM to be able to run several software applications at the same time, so I'm going to have to upgrade my PC's RAM again if I want to be able to run Windows 2000. I think I'll end up adding another 128MB to the 96MB I already have, to try to make sure I'll have enough!

Hard Drive

Your PC's hard drive is the main permanent storage system of your PC. The capacity of a hard drive is expressed in terms of gigabytes (billions of bytes), as in 4.3GB or 8.4GB or 16GB. Think of a hard drive as long-term memory. A hard drive is basically a sealed metal box inside your PC, with one or more round metal platters spinning inside of it, like CDs stacked up inside of a CD player. Your PC's operating system (Windows 98, Windows 2000, etc.) and all of your software applications (Microsoft Word, games, Internet software, etc.) are all installed onto your PC's hard drive. Then, when you turn on your PC, your PC's operating system is loaded from the hard drive (long-term memory) into RAM (short-term memory). Likewise, when you double-click on an icon to start Microsoft Word, your PC loads Microsoft Word from your PC's hard drive into RAM too, so that it can use it. In the same manner, when you've created something on your PC or gotten something off the Internet that you want to save, you save it to your PC's hard drive. The metal platters inside the hard drive spin, and one or more magnetic read/write heads quickly move back and forth across the surfaces of the spinning platters, saving your work on the metal platters as a series of magnetic impulses. Even when you shut down your PC, the things you've saved on its hard drive will still be there. So, when you want to see your work again later, the magnetic read/write heads inside your PC's hard drive read the appropriate magnetic impulses off of the spinning metal platters, loading your work back into RAM, and your work appears on your screen again.

It makes sense that as operating systems and software applications become more powerful and user-friendly, they take up more hard drive space on your PC. For example, less than 2 years ago, I bought a new PC that came with a 4.3GB (4.3 billion bytes) hard drive. At the time, Windows 95 only required about 110MB (110 million bytes) of hard drive space. Even though Windows 95 was only going to take up about 1/40th of my hard drive space, I bought another 4.3GB hard drive, exactly like the first one, and used it to backup my original hard drive, since I do a lot of testing and experimenting that sometimes causes me to trash my whole hard drive. In less than 2 years, I've filled more than 2GB of my PC's hard drive space with software and things I've created (like this Web site). Now, less than 2 years later, ENT (Enterprise Networking) magazine announced that the upcoming Windows 2000 operating system will require a minimum of a 1GB hard drive in order to have room to be installed. While that's only about 1/4 the size of my current hard drive, it's still about 10 times more hard drive space than Windows 95 required! That means that if I installed Windows 2000 and kept using my currently installed software and saved files, I'd only have about 1GB of free space left on my 4.3GB hard drive! The good news is that hard drives just keep getting bigger and cheaper, and the hard drives that come in many new PCs are already 8.4GB, 10GB or even bigger, with 20GB and even larger drives on the way! Be sure to get a really big one in your new PC, so you'll have plenty of room for your operating system, software applications (which get bigger all the time), and games, plus room to store all the things you're going to want to save on your PC. For those who are price-conscious, the second-biggest hard drive will always have a more attractive price than the very biggest hard drive, because the biggest drive will always come at a premium price.

Brand Names

What PC brands can you trust? Which brands should you stay away from? Which ones have good quality parts, good technical support, good customer service? No one has had experience buying from and dealing with every company that builds and sells PCs. However, through talking to other PC owners over a period of time, one can get a good idea of which brands people are generally happy with and which ones they wish they hadn't bought. I am not going to recommend any particular brand, but I'll tell you which brands I have personally been happy and unhappy with over the past 17 years, and which brands I have heard mostly good things about or mostly bad things about from articles I've read and from people I trust over the years. Hopefully, this will give you enough information to help you decide which brand of PC you want to buy.

REVIEWER	RECOMMENDED	NOT RECOMMENDED
ComputerBob	CTX and Dell and Dell Notebooks and Gateway and Hewlett-Packard and Toshiba Notebooks	Compaq¹ IBM¹
Magazine Articles and Friends	Dell and Dell Notebooks and Gateway and Hewlett-Packard Notebooks and Micron and Micron Notebooks and Toshiba Notebooks	Acer AST Compaq¹ IBM¹ Packard Bell²
¹Compaq and IBM, though generally high quality, are not recommended because their internal parts are often proprietary, meaning that, instead of being able to buy standard RAM and other components to upgrade them, you have to use more expensive, non-standard parts manufactured by Compaq or IBM to upgrade their RAM and other components. ²Packard Bell is not recommended because of many complaints of hardware failures and poor customer service. UPDATE: In late 1999, NEC (Packard Bell's parent company) laid off 80% of Packard Bell's U.S. workforce and withdrew the Packard Bell brand from the U.S. retail computer market. There are also many inexpensive no-name PCs, available both locally and on the Internet, usually assembled by small local companies, using standard parts that they buy in bulk from manufacturers. Some of them are very high quality PCs, while others are very poor. It all depends on whether or not they're using high-quality, name-brand motherboards, hard drives, video boards, modems, power supplies, keyboards, mice, and other components. Don't buy a no-name PC unless you know enough to know that they use high quality standard parts, that they have good customer service and technical support. Whether you buy a good or bad no-name PC, you will have to do a lot more setup, hardware and software installation, and troubleshooting with a no-name PC than you would have to do if you had bought a brand-name PC that came with pre-installed software. If you have the knowledge, skills, and time to be able to set up your own PC, you can get a great deal by buying a no-name PC.

REVIEWER

RECOMMENDED

NOT RECOMMENDED

ComputerBob

CTX and
Dell and
Dell Notebooks and
Gateway and
Hewlett-Packard and
Toshiba Notebooks

Compaq¹
IBM¹

Magazine Articles
and Friends

Dell and
Dell Notebooks and
Gateway and
Hewlett-Packard Notebooks and
Micron and
Micron Notebooks and
Toshiba Notebooks

Acer
AST
Compaq¹
IBM¹
Packard Bell²

¹Compaq and IBM, though generally high quality, are not recommended because their internal parts are often proprietary, meaning that, instead of being able to buy standard RAM and other components to upgrade them, you have to use more expensive, non-standard parts manufactured by Compaq or IBM to upgrade their RAM and other components.

²Packard Bell is not recommended because of many complaints of hardware failures and poor customer service. UPDATE: In late 1999, NEC (Packard Bell's parent company) laid off 80% of Packard Bell's U.S. workforce and withdrew the Packard Bell brand from the U.S. retail computer market.

There are also many inexpensive no-name PCs, available both locally and on the Internet, usually assembled by small local companies, using standard parts that they buy in bulk from manufacturers. Some of them are very high quality PCs, while others are very poor. It all depends on whether or not they're using high-quality, name-brand motherboards, hard drives, video boards, modems, power supplies, keyboards, mice, and other components. Don't buy a no-name PC unless you know enough to know that they use high quality standard parts, that they have good customer service and technical support. Whether you buy a good or bad no-name PC, you will have to do a lot more setup, hardware and software installation, and troubleshooting with a no-name PC than you would have to do if you had bought a brand-name PC that came with pre-installed software. If you have the knowledge, skills, and time to be able to set up your own PC, you can get a great deal by buying a no-name PC.

There are a lot of brands of PCs out there that aren't on my chart, because I don't know enough about them to recommend or not recommend them. Personally, I would not buy any of those other brands of PC -- I will always let someone else pay to find out if any of those other brands of PC are any good or not. If it turns out that some of them are proven to be good brands, then I'll hear about them (it's my job), and I'll consider buying one of them in the future. I would caution you to stay away from any brands that you've never heard of, as well as any new PC brands that sales people tell you are going to be the next hot PC -- salespeople don't have a clue as to what brands are going to be the next hot PC! Chances are that the new brand the salesperson is trying to sell you is eventually going to go out of business, leaving you with an orphan PC, and the only reason the salesperson is trying to sell it to you is because his or her store makes a higher markup profit on it than they do on brand name PCs. Those of us who know about PCs never rush to buy any new brands or new products because we know from experience that new brands and new products always come with frustrating and time-consuming hardware and software incompatibility problems. We let others discover and fix those problems before we even consider the possibility of buying the product.

Upgradability

If you keep your PC for more than a couple of years, you're probably going to want to add some hardware to it, or upgrade some part of it in the future. That's why, when you buy a PC, you should make sure it is capable of being expanded and upgraded. Don't buy a tiny "mini-desktop" PC, because it won't have any room in it to add anything like a second hard drive, a tape backup drive, a DVD drive, a SCSI expansion card to connect a scanner, or a cable modem, and it may not even have any room to add more RAM. For those reasons, make sure that the PC you buy has at least a big desktop case (made to sit horizontally on your desk). An even better solution is to get a "mini tower" or "full tower" case PC. Those are both designed to stand up vertically, either on your desk, or on the floor underneath your desk, giving you more desktop room, while also having plenty of room inside to be able to add devices. Also, make sure that your new PC's RAM memory is upgradeable, and find out the maximum amount of RAM it will hold. You don't want to be stuck with a PC that won't hold enough RAM to be able to run the software you need to run, both now and in the future! And finally, buy a PC that is assembled out of standard parts (RAM, hard drive, modem, video card, etc.) that you can buy anywhere. Don't buy a PC that is full of proprietary parts (see the footnote regarding Compaq and IBM in the chart above), or you'll go through more trouble and pay more every time you want to upgrade your PC, because you'll be forced to buy non-standard parts from your PC's manufacturer.

Finding the Best Price

When comparing two different dealers' prices on the same computer, find out exactly what is included in each dealer's package, and then adjust each dealer's price to account for any feature differences between the two. For example, if one dealer sells a TurboCrash 1500Mhz Pentium III PC package for $2000 and another dealer sells the same PC package for only $1800, you could possibly end up saving you money by buying the more expensive package. How? Because often, the more expensive package includes more RAM and/or a bigger monitor and/or a bigger hard drive and/or more software, and/or a printer, and if you bought the cheaper package, you would have to pay another $300-$500 to its price in order to get all the things that are already included in the more expensive package.

If you're thinking of buying a PC online, you can learn about product features, read product reviews and compare prices from many online dealers at ComputerShopper, Computers.com, mySimon (features + prices only) and Price Watch (prices only). Don't forget to also compare the shipping costs charged by different dealers.

Conclusion

Buy an upgradeable PC with the fastest (or second fastest) CPU, the most RAM, and the biggest hard drive that you can afford, from a brand name you can trust. If you only remember one thing from this guide, remember that. Why? Because even though you think you don't need all that speed, storage, and memory right now, you will definitely need it in the future. Operating systems (Windows 98, Windows NT, Windows 2000, etc.) and software applications (Microsoft Word, Internet Explorer, Doom, etc.) get more powerful and more user-friendly all the time. That means that they need faster and faster CPUs in order to run at a decent speed, more RAM in order to be able to run at all, and more and more hard drive space. It's cheaper and easier to buy the fastest CPU, the most RAM, and the biggest hard drive you can afford now than it would be to have to pay someone to upgrade the different parts of your PC in the future.

Oh, and one more thing: PCs get faster and cheaper every day, so when you buy one, understand that it's not going to be worth anything if you should ever decide to sell it. You're going to have to get your money's worth out of it by using it. And no matter what PC you buy; no matter how great it is; no matter how little you pay for it; in three months, you will wish you had waited.