Why is buying a computer so confusing??? 1

[ejaggers]

I have been looking to buy a new or used computer, but when I go on craigslist, best buy, etc. the only thing I get is confused. Technical specs and vender models mean absolutely nothing to me. Ads say things like, “It has a NVIDIA GeForce Go 8600M GT with 256MB GDDR3, or a PNY XLR8 8800GTX OVERCLOCKED EDITION, or ATI Radeon HD 4870”, which is totally meaningless to me. How do I prepare myself to choose a computer?

I have owned two computers, and when I bought them, I just got the most expensive one I could afford at the time. But that strategy won’t work now because prices range from $200 to $4000, and my budget is tight like everyone else. I must also add that, I keep a computer more than 10 years at a time. This one is so old, the memory is PC100, and the only reason I know this is because it originally came with MS ME and 128K ram. A friend installed XP years ago, and I added extra memory myself. See, that’s how old it is. I don’t remember this being so confusing back in the day. Can anyone help???

 

[CiscoGuy33]

ejaggers,

Google is your friend here, not only in figuring out what everything is, but then looking to see what others are saying about a paticular computer or brand or store!

Here is a GREAT site that explains it all in pretty good detail -

http://www.computerhope.com/btips/

When I see something such as a product - a computer, a router, a cell phone etc. I Google it to see what is out there on that subject. So if the ad says it has a "NVIDIA GeForce Go 8600M GT" then Google NVIDIA GeForce Go 8600M GT and see what it is all about. Soon you will find you have a better understanding and get a better understanding of what you need!

Something you also might want to check out is places like Dell HP and Gateway - look for where they sell the "returned" systems, these are "new", completely rechecked and have warrenties in case anything does go wrong, in most case, the best thing with a new computer is to turn it on and let it run 24/7 for a bout 2 weeks, almost anything that will fail, will fail in that time. Then just use it as you normally would (IE:- I don't have my compter on 24/7 - just for the first 2 weeks)

Remember, these large companies can not sell these returned computers as "new", even if it was never unpacked. You can save 15% to 50% on some of these "refurbished" systems.

Just some thoughts, hope they help!!!

E.A. Broda
CCNA, CCDA, CCAI, Network +

 

[vacunita]

Its getting more complex because there are more things now for a PC then there were 10 years ago.

10 years ago, you'd be looking at a computer that has a x amount of ram and a processor with y speed. Maybe a Hard drive.

These days, you have dedicated Graphics cards for gaming purposes, you have Wifi adapters, larger hard drives even more than 1 in different data saving configurations. The processors now offer different things and different speeds ...

The best thing to do is think about what you are going to do with the computer.
If you pan on running very demanding games they all have a likst of Supported Video cards on the box so you know what you need to have.

If you want it just for Email and Word Processing, then the Video card doesn't really matter. Anything that says 256MB will be enough and you'll be able to run some games with no hassle. But you may find that you are limited to the higher end more demanding games out there.

as Ciscoguy says "Research" is of primary importance when buying a new PC. or any electronic device for that matter.

Look for reviews so you know what other people think about it. What experiences they have had with it etc..

Ask in forums like this one what people think about the computer or device you are wanting to buy.



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Phil AKA Vacunita
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Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[ejaggers]

Thanks, CiscoGuy33 and Vacunita

I don't need a gaming computer, at least I don't think so. But from what I can tell, they are very powerful boxes; which means I might not have to replace it for ten years. I've never played high end games on a computer, basically because I don't have any, or a box that would run them. I wouldn't mind doing it but it's really not that important. So I assume, like Vacunita said, a 256 MB video card is probably fine. Now if I could only figure out the rest. And what's up with putting water coolers on a computer now? Does a bigger video card help with "surfing the net" time? If so, what is one step above the 256MB VC.

 

[Johnthephoneguy]

Water cooling is a method of cooling the CPU's. This is usually done on overclocked systems wchich create more heat than a "stock" system. For what you describe I don't think you would need water cooling.

A bigger video card is really not necessary for just web surfing. A seperate video card will give you better performance than an on board video, but just for surfing and basic Office stuff the 256 card will do you fine.

JohnThePhoneGuy

"If I can't fix it, it's not broke!

 

[vacunita]

The Video Card has little to no impact on internet browsing.

Any run of the mil card will let you browse the internet just as well as a higher end one.

And what's up with putting water coolers on a computer now?

huh? If you mean the liquid cooling systems those usually come with high end gaming machines since the drives and the video cards can generate large amounts of heat which is detrimental to the components.

RAM is the most important aspect you'll be looking at.

The more RAM the better specially if you plan on buying a Computer with Windows Vista on it. Settle for nothing less that 3GB

After that, Hard drive space will depend on what kinds of files you plan on storing. how many of them etc..










----------------------------------
Phil AKA Vacunita
----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[CiscoGuy33]

ejaggers,

I don't need a gaming computer, at least I don't think so. But from what I can tell, they are very powerful boxes; which means I might not have to replace it for ten years. I've never played high end games on a computer, basically because I don't have any, or a box that would run them.

Like you said, you don't need a "gaming computer" I would not spend the amounts of money that gamers do just to try keeping from buying a computer for another 10 years. Gamers pay top dollar for speed and the lastest greatest technology. YOU DO NOT NEED THIS for browsing the Internet and playing a game now and then.

Go to a Borders or Barnes and Noble, grab a cup of coffee and pick up a PC World and Computer Shopper mag and sit down and read them to get a feel for the technology and the terms. Check out the computer section and again look for a book that explains the latest technolgy, lots of books on buying computers or understanding computers - I like the whole "Dummies" series - very easy and quick read. Sit down and enjoy your coffee and get caught up!!! A few cups of coffee might save you several thousand dollars on your next PC purchase

Hope this helps!

E.A. Broda
CCNA, CCDA, CCAI, Network +

 

[paparazi]

ejaggers
It is clear that we are never going to teach you about the hardware as if you would be interested anyway, so..
Simple......tell us your budget and what you use a computer for and members will post the best deals...easy.
Might help to know where you reside as well.
Martin

On wings like angels whispers sweet
my heart it feels a broken beat
Touched soul and hurt lay wounded deep
Brown eyes are lost afar and sleep

 

[ejaggers]

paparazi, Thanks... I like that approach.

We use MS office products like word, outlook, IE, etc. I have Perl installed because I write scripts for work. Some of the simpler games that don’t involve a high end system. My wife does taxes, etc.

This would be easier if I was filling out a check list form, because I need to do what ever needs to be done in the future which is vague but true. As far as budget, that’s tough also because that’s like me telling you how much I’m going to spend on a car, but don’t know anything about cars. I’ll come up with the money but I have no idea at this point how much to spend. All I can say is that I need a computer and flat screen monitor. I’ll keep my printer for now.

 

[vacunita]

We do need at least a ball park figure.

When you go to buy a car you have an idea how much you want to spend. Otherwise you'd just go out and buy a Ferrari.

Anyway, if you can dish out say 1000 to 1500 dollars I think you can get a pretty good system that can last for some time.




----------------------------------
Phil AKA Vacunita
----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[ejaggers]

vacunita (Programmer)

Wow!!! I hadn't planned to spend that much. In fact the salesman at Best Buy claimed that his top of the line, (excluding gaming boxes) was about $800 if I remember correctly. At Fry's it was about the same. BTW, I live in the Dallas Tx area. I was thinking more about $500 for the computer alone, and that's why I was looking on craigslist.

Although I did spend that much years ago when I bought this one. I've been lucky with this one, it's been an iron horse. I've added memory, an extra hard drive, and had to replace the power supply. But that's it. No other problems what so ever. I don't know if that is typical or not.

 

[ghrark]

have you tried buying from a surplus dealer? i bought mine that way. paid about 75 bucks for the case. i bought my keyboard, mouse and monitor separately. mine came with just the mainboard and the cpu and the basics. i had to supply the hard drive, RAM and the OS and my dvd burner. that was it. total cost i spent was 300 bucks on my computer and its plenty fast with xp on it for simple, everyday usage. i play older games so not biggie on graphics. recently got a better graphics card for it but that was it. i would recommend looking at surpluscomputers.com

excellent site and selection for those of us on cheap budgets. they also sell complete computers too.

 

[Johnthephoneguy]

Dell also has a section for refurbs they sell. Comes with full warranty but cheaper because they cant sell it as new.

JohnThePhoneGuy

"If I can't fix it, it's not broke!

 

[ejaggers]

Please take a look at this one and tell me why I need to spend more money than this:

http://www.shopping.hp.com/store/product/product_detail/FK586AAR%23ABA

And please tell why I should spend this much:

http://www.shopping.hp.com/store/product/product_detail/KJ376AAR%23ABA

 

[gbaughma]

Here's a simple explanation.

CPU - The "Brain". The faster the CPU, the faster it processes requests. Dual core and Quad core mean "Two processors on one chip", and "Four processors on one chip".

RAM - Think of RAM like a whiteboard/chalkboard. When you load a file (say, a word document), it copies it from the hard drive (See below) to the whiteboard. THe bigger the whiteboard, the bigger files you can have open, or more files at once.

Hard Drive - Think of the hard drive like a library. The bigger the library, the more books you can have. When you save something to the hard drive, it is copying it off of the "White board" and putting it in the "Library".

Video Card - Your video card is the window to the white board. However, many video cards have their own processors on them, and additional dedicated memory on the video cards allows faster manipulation of the graphics. To put it simply, many video games use 3D graphics. 3D graphics are represented in triangles. The triangles then get "wrapped" with an image. The video processor does those calculations, taking the load off of the CPU of the computer. The more RAM that is on a video card, the more information it can store to be readily available to render your image.

Notes about all of this:

Windows Vista 32-bit (the operating system, or what makes the computer "Work") requires more RAM just to operate than, say, Windows XP. But, there is a limit. Vista 32-bit can only acess about 3.5 GB (GigaBytes, or 3.5 Billion Characters) of RAM at one time. Therefore, anything more than 4 GB of RAM is really wasted on a 32-bit operating system.

All of these things interact. For example, the speed of the RAM and the bus speed of the motherboard will determine how quickly the CPU can access the information it needs in the RAM (White Board). The speed of the hard drive, both the rotation speed (how soon will the information I need spin under a head?) and the transfer speed (once I find the information, how fast can I copy it to the RAM?) play as well.

You can have a smoking-fast CPU, but if the RAM is slow and the hard drive is slow, you won't see the performance that you could.

If windows runs out of RAM, it will "Swap" what it's not using to the hard drive (The Swap file or virtual memory) and load the RAM with what it needs. This will cause a severe performance hit, because even the fastest hard drive on the market is a fraction of the speed of RAM. So, the minute your computer starts swapping information to and from the hard drive, you will see a serious performance hit.

I hope this helps.


Just my 2¢

"What the captain doesn't realize is that we've secretly replaced his Dilithium Crystals with new Folger's Crystals."

--Greg

http://parallel.tzo.com

 

[jkl0]

The below site also has more info about what what gbaughma is saying.

http://zone.ni.com/devzone/cda/tut/p/id/5709

 

[wahnula]

Please take a look at this one and tell me why I need to spend more money than this:

No reason at all. This is a fine PC and will do everything you need. My thoughts are to either go "bottom of the line" or "top of the line" as far as components are concerned. The fact is "bottom of the line" these days will still slay your 10-year-old rig. The $349 PC sounds like your best bet.

Tony

Users helping Users...

 

[vacunita]

See you do have an idea of how much you wish to spend.

You get what you pay for. cheap machines like those need to be upgraded.

I've added memory, an extra hard drive, and had to replace the power supply

Failing supplies can take down other components with them when they fail. That's a primary concern.


As for your 2 choices lets see:

They are both refurbished, so they are significantly under their original retail Price. I'm pretty sure your more expensive choice was over the 1000 dollar mark at some point in its life.

Compaq Presario             HP Pavillion
RAM 3GB Upgradeable to 4    4GB upgradeable to 8

Nvidia 6150 128MB           Nvidia 8500 GT 512MB dedicated.
up to 319 if you take away
 from system memory

Lightscribe DVD              Lightscribe DVD
Secondary DVD drive          none

Hard Drive 320GB            750GB

Network 10/100              10/100/1000 

Integrated Audio            High Definition audio

No firewire                 2 Firewire ports

no card reader              Built in Card reader

Except for the secondary Optical drive, the more expensive one is leagues better than the cheaper Compaq.

Of course the more expensive one assumes you have media devices you wish to connect to it such as a Camcorder, or Camera memory card etc...

Still in my eyes for the money the more expensive one is the better choice.




----------------------------------
Phil AKA Vacunita
----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[ejaggers]

I want to thank everyone for this valuable info.

Wahnula's pick sounds good because it saves me money, and he (or she) thinks the Compaq is sound enough. However, Vacunita makes a very compelling argument since I keep my boxes so long. I ordinarily don’t connect to things such as a Camcorder, or Camera memory card, etc but would like to have the option should I decide to in the future.

Can we also talk about XP vs Vista. I am only familiar with XP, but the few conversations I’ve had about Vista have all been negative. Also, I heard that Windows 7’s purpose is to replace Vista.
Remember earlier I said that this box originally came with ME. Well I never had a problem with ME, but most conversations I had about it were negative. I went to XP first chance I got anyway.
What do ya’ll think about Vista?

This box has been an iron horse, dependable for many years, and aside from the upgrades I made, the only thing that ever broke was the power supply. I don’t know if this is typical or not. What do you think about buying a used box from someone? Do you think I’m asking for trouble? I’m pretty good at buying used cars, and have bought very few lemons, since I know quite a bit about cars.

Please tell me what you think about buying used, and about these three:

http://dallas.craigslist.org/dal/sys/1078144728.html

http://dallas.craigslist.org/dal/sys/1075230898.html

http://dallas.craigslist.org/ftw/sys/1071276877.html

 

[gbaughma]

What do ya'll think about Vista?

Now that SP1 has been released, I don't have any problems with it. It has been very stable, and I run a wide variety of programs on it.


Just my 2¢

"What the captain doesn't realize is that we've secretly replaced his Dilithium Crystals with new Folger's Crystals."

--Greg

http://parallel.tzo.com