2008 Woodie Awards
A Beginners Guide to Buying a PC
Reed Porter
Issue date: 2/26/08 Section: News
You are standing in Circuit City looking at a number of different computers sitting in their neat little rows. All of them appear to be pretty much the same, yet they have very different price tags. You look closer at the specifications under the price to realize that they might as well be written in a foreign language, as you have absolutely no clue what you are reading.
If this sounds familiar then pay close attention as I am about to provide you with concise, plain English information that will help you make an informed decision on your next buy or build.
Whether it is a laptop or a desktop computer you are looking to purchase, the only central processing unit (cpu) you are going to want to look for is an Intel Core 2 Duo.
The Core 2 Duo's are high and low the most powerful processors for your money. They stomp over all of their competition and are available for both Laptop and Desktop computers.
The great thing about these new processors is that they are dual-core. Dual-core means that when you are holding the physical processor in your hand, under the protective shielding of the unit are two processor cores packed into one cpu.
A Core 2 Duo is essentially two cpu's in one. The benefit of this is that any software that is multithreaded (meaning it fully supports a dual-core processor) will run up to twice as fast as on a dual-core cpu, then it would on a single-core cpu.
The great news is that there are already a lot of everyday programs written to support multi-core processors. The bad news is that it is slow going; the software industry is always slow to catch up with the technological improvements of the hardware industry.
By buying a dual-core processor you will see a noticeable performance increase in many of the programs you already use, and as more and more programs are coming out with dual-core support, your computer will only get faster.
Memory is the quickest means for your computer to temporarily store information. When you start a program on your computer, the cpu sends a request to the hard drive to retrieve the information for that program. Since the hard drive is by far the slowest component in your computer, the cpu reads the information from it once and then shoves it into your computer's memory, and the program is now running on your computer.
If this sounds familiar then pay close attention as I am about to provide you with concise, plain English information that will help you make an informed decision on your next buy or build.
Whether it is a laptop or a desktop computer you are looking to purchase, the only central processing unit (cpu) you are going to want to look for is an Intel Core 2 Duo.
The Core 2 Duo's are high and low the most powerful processors for your money. They stomp over all of their competition and are available for both Laptop and Desktop computers.
The great thing about these new processors is that they are dual-core. Dual-core means that when you are holding the physical processor in your hand, under the protective shielding of the unit are two processor cores packed into one cpu.
A Core 2 Duo is essentially two cpu's in one. The benefit of this is that any software that is multithreaded (meaning it fully supports a dual-core processor) will run up to twice as fast as on a dual-core cpu, then it would on a single-core cpu.
The great news is that there are already a lot of everyday programs written to support multi-core processors. The bad news is that it is slow going; the software industry is always slow to catch up with the technological improvements of the hardware industry.
By buying a dual-core processor you will see a noticeable performance increase in many of the programs you already use, and as more and more programs are coming out with dual-core support, your computer will only get faster.
Memory is the quickest means for your computer to temporarily store information. When you start a program on your computer, the cpu sends a request to the hard drive to retrieve the information for that program. Since the hard drive is by far the slowest component in your computer, the cpu reads the information from it once and then shoves it into your computer's memory, and the program is now running on your computer.