Shopping suggestions for new computers for first half 2008!
processor -
Intel - (currently the speed
king) - no Celeron
prefer "Core 2 Duo", "Centrino Duo", or better
AMD (often better "bang
for the buck" than Intel) - no Duron or Sempron
prefer "Athlon X2" or "Turion64 X2"
RAM - Memory - 1GB(Gigabyte) minimum prefer 2GB or better - The "sweet spot" for Vista is 2GB.
Hard drive size shouldn't be an issue since most drives are pretty large now. The smallest for a laptop should be 120GB by now for laptops and for desktops should be about 250GB, and if you find one smaller that, it only means that drive has been sitting on a shelf for about a year, nothing smaller than 120 is being manufactured now.
Operating system - Windows XP Pro, Windows Vista Home Premium, or Windows Vista Ultimate ONLY! Don't get XP Home, Vista Home Basic, and I don't think Vista Business(this might be OK in some situations but not for most home users).
Brands - HP/Compaq or Gateway/eMachine - My current choice would be hp, they have the best support and typically better screens, along with other features right now. NO DELL! NO SONY!
Also don't let "Centrino" be the selling point. In the I.T. world it's referred to as good "Marchitecture", in other words, it's good marketing. It does work, but so does everybody else's built in wireless, chipset, and processors.
All of the computers sold by the major manufacturers have loaded a bunch of software known as "TrialWare" on the machines to try to get you to use it and then buy the software after the trial period has runs out. I usually will remove almost all of it. Microsoft Office is a good example. It is a very good suite of software that is used in many situations, for work and school. It will almost certainly be loaded on the machine with a 60 day trial. After the trial you'll have to buy it for about $170 with the cd sent to you so that if the hard drive fails you still own the software. You can purchase the Student Teacher edition of Office from Newegg.com for about $130.00 and you can load it on up to three computers. This also leads me to another thing that you should do when buying a new computer, after you buy it, you should contact the manufacture and get them to send a complete set of "Restore" disks. Most of the computers are loaded with a restore partition so that if you have really messed up the operating system to the point that it won't run right, you can restore the system to the factory settings that will wipe out all of your data, just like the day you bought it. This isn't always a bad thing, except if the hard drive fails. At that point you are going to have to purchase all of your software again if you don't have cds or dvds to restore your system after buying a new hard drive.
This is a pretty good starting point. You should actually go into a store and TOUCH the laptops for sure, just to feel what the keyboards are like. If you are even a half way good touch typist, then it will make a difference what the keyboard layout is. Personally I'm pretty good sized and like a larger keyboard layout. Some of the laptops have a separate 10key number pad (I like these), but you may not want or need this. I would really suggest you shop at Office Depot and then BestBuy. Sam's sometimes has good deals too, but they aren't consistent and don't carry the same product from one week to the next. Circuit City I'm not too wild about, same for OfficeMax, but check them out for prices just in case. Make sure to compare apples to apples, especially in the case of Circuit City (exact same model numbers to exact same model numbers). Ask Office Depot about the extended warranty. Laptops are among the only products that I recommend the extended warranty for since the parts are proprietary and desktops the parts are usually easy to replace. After you shop in a store, you should also look on line and see if you can find a better deal. Depending on the site, you can find pretty good deals but you should also check out how good the online retailer is. If it's from the manufacturer then you shouldn't have any trouble but often from the other sites you get a better deal. Sounds strange but it's true.
Call me with questions, even during shopping - Vic Lovan - 618.410.8775
Disclaimer - This site is meant as a help site and I won't be held responsible if you screw up your computer or someone else's computer. I won't be responsible for any of the programs listed anywhere on this page or anywhere on VicLovan.com. I didn't write any of the programs listed so if it messes up something you'll have to see the people that wrote it (and most likely you agreed to some sort of EULA not to blame them either when you installed that program). What all this will boil down to is this, BACK UP YOUR DATA, anything that is important to you, should be backed up to multiple locations, and if it's that important to you then you should take at least one copy off the premises. FOR CRYIN' OUT LOUD IT'S A COMPUTER IT'S PROBABLY GOING TO SCREW UP AT SOME TIME AND YOU'LL HAVE TO START OVER ANYWAY! OK, enough of the soap box, just use some common sense and you should be fine.
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