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Knowledge Is Power: How to Buy a Computer

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Knowledge is Power: How To Buy A Computer

Buying a personal computer can be as difficult as buying a car. No matter how much one investigates, how many dealers a person visits, and how much bargaining a person has done on the price, he still may not be really certain that he has gotten a good deal. There are good reasons for this uncertainty. Computers change at much faster rate than any other kind of product. A two-year-old car will always get a person where he wants to go, but a two-year-old computer may be completely inadequate for his needs. Also, the average person is not technically savvy enough to make an informed decision on the best processor to buy, the right size for a hard drive, or how much memory he or she really needs. …show more content…

No products change as quickly as computers. Considering the pace of this change, it does not make sense to buy a computer today without planning for tomorrow.
Every computer claims to be upgradeable, but there are varying degrees of expandability. A truly expandable unit has:

At least two empty SIMM sockets for memory upgrades At least three empty expansion slots (preferably local-bus PCI slots) A standard-sized motherboard that one can replace with a newer model A large case with lots of room inside (I prefer the "mini-tower" design.)

The last two items require a bit of explanation. The motherboard is the computer's main circuit board, which holds the processor(such as a '486 or
Pentium chip) and the memory (RAM). Even if the consumer buys the fastest
Pentium Pro system available today, at some point he is going to need to go to a faster processor. Some motherboards try to provide a way to add a faster processor later. The problem is, computer manufacturers do not really know what features computers will have two years from now. The best way to guarantee that he will be able to upgrade his processor, therefore, is to make sure that the consumer can replace the motherboard. A person might think that it would be very expensive to replace the motherboard, but actually, it can be a very cost- effective way to upgrade a computer. For example, a friend of mine had an old 25
MHz 386SX computer with 2MB of RAM. By current

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