Knowledge Is Power: How To Buy A Computer :: essays research papers

Knowledge is Power How To Buy A Computer purchase a soulal computer can be as embarrassing as buying a car. No matter how practically unity investigates, how m whatever dealers a person visits, and how much bargaininga person has d nonp aril on the price, he still whitethorn not be really certain that he hasgotten a good deal. There ar good reasons for this uncertainty. Computerschange at much faster rate than any other kind of product. A two-year-old carwill always make grow a person where he motivations to go, but a two-year-old computer maybe completely inadequate for his needs. Also, the average person is nottechnically savvy enough to make an informed decision on the beat processor tobuy, the right size for a hard drive, or how much memory he or she really needs.Just because buying a computer can be confusing does not mean unrivalled should throwup his hands and put himself at the mercy of some(a) salesman who may not know muchmore than he does. If one would follow a some basic guidelines, he could be advised of making a wise purchase decision.A computer has precisely one purpose to run programs. Some programs require more compute power than others. In order to figure out how powerful a computer theconsumer needs, therefore, a person must first determine which programs he wantsto run. For many buyers, this creates a problem. They cannot buy a computeruntil they know what they want to do with it, but they cannot really know allof the uses there are for a computer until they own one. This problem is not as debatable as it seems, however. The consumer should go to his local computer store,and look at the bundle thats available. Most programs explain their minimumhardware requirements right on the box. later on looking at a few packages, itshould be pretty take a crap to the consumer that any mid-range system will run 99% ofthe available software. A person should only need a top-of-the-line system forprofessional applications much(prenominal) a s graphic design, video production, orengineering. Software tends to lag rat hardware, because its written toreach the widest possible audience. A program that only full treatment on the fastestPentium Pro system has very limited sales potential, so most programs written in1985 work just pretty on a fast 486, or an entry-level Pentium system. Moreimportantly, very few programs are optimized to take advantage of a Pentiumspower. That means that even if the consumer pays a large premium for the fastest