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Its Sunday afternoon and I was looking through the inserts in the paper to see what prices are on the latest and greatest computers.
A headline reads ---- AMD Athlon 64 Processor / 3700+ MHz Processor with
- 1024 MB Ram Memory
- 200 gigabyte hard drive
- DVD-RW Drive
- 17 inch .21 monitor
- color inkjet printer
- Windows XP Pro with MS-Works
What does all this mean? Is this a good computer to buy, or should you look for something else? Here is an attempt to make some meaning out of these numbers and terms.
To decipher this, AMD is the name of the company that makes the computer chip inside the metal or plastic box that holds most of the working parts of the computer. The Athalon is the model number of the chip that process 64 bits of information at once found inside the computer. Think of it this way …. You have a Ford automobile and the model is a Taurus.
The 3700+ Mhz is telling us the SPEED of the processor. When the first personal computers came out in the early 1980’s , the processor speed was about 2 Mhz. You might think of computer speed as miles per hour. In the days of the horse and buggy, you might be able to travel 2 miles in one hour. In the days of the jet plane, you can easily travel about 600 miles per hour. How much speed do you need? I always ask my students; do you need a DAYTONA RACE CAR to go down to the local convenience stores to pick up a 6 pack of pop? I do word processing, spread sheets, data bases and make web pages all on a 1300 Mhz machine that’s 2 years old. I drive my Chevy pickup truck down to the store to pick up my 6 pack. You don’t need a sledgehammer to put in a thumbtack.
1024 MB Ram is the amount of internal memory in the computer. RAM stands for “Random Access Memory”. The programs and information that is manipulated by the computer resides on the hard drive. The place where the actual work is done – the workbench – is RAM. If you are building project in your wood working shop, the bigger the workbench, the bigger the projects you can work on. If the project is too big, you work on one part on the on your workbench. You next take this first part off the workbench and put on a second part of your project. Now you work on this second part. If you want to work on the first part again, you need to move the second part off the workbench and put the first part of the project back on the workbench. It would sure make things easier if you JUST HAVE A BIGGER WORK BENCH. The more RAM you have, the easier and faster it is to get projects done on the computer. RAM memory is temporary. Once you turn off your computer, any information in RAM will disappear.
For the average person who is going to write letters, do some simple spread sheets, keep track of their mailing list and surf the World Wide Web, 512 Meg is plenty with Windows XP. If you are going to start playing graphics intense games and do complicated desktop publishing, you should look at going to 1024 Meg. Adding RAM to your computer is the least expensive and most cost effective upgrade you can do to your computer. Adding more RAM allows you to do more work at the same time on the same project.
200 GIGABYTE hard drive. This is a lot of storage. Every character, letter, number, or space occupies ONE BYTE of space on the Hard Drive. This drive can store 200,000,000,000 bytes of information. This memory is permanent. When you turn off the computer, the information stored on the HD remains. To put this in prospective, this is enough storage to give each student on the campus of Winona State University (they have about 8,000 students) 34 DIFFERENT text books with a average number of 360 pages in each book. This is with each of the 272,000 text books being DIFFERENT titles --- no books are the same on the entire campus.
DVD-RW Drive This is a Digital Video Disk (DVD) drive. These are the plastic disks with imprinting on one side and a shiny silver mirror like finish on the flip side. You can store about 2600 Meg of data on these disks. This is as much storage as about 1857 3-˝ inch standard floppy disks. The RW means that this particular drive can both READ information and WRITE information to the DVD. This is a drive you can use to store BACK UP information from your hard drive. This DVD drive will also use the CD-R disks, which are READ ONLY.
17 inch .21 monitor. The 17-inch is the DIAGONAL DISTANCE of the monitor. This is the minimum size you should consider. The price difference between a 15-inch and a 17-inch monitor is not that much. If you can afford it, consider a 17-inch monitor. The .21 is the distance between the pixels on the monitor screen. Pixels are tiny dots that collectively produce an image for the eye to view. The closer these dots are together, the better the image quality. DO NOT ever get anything LESS THEN, .28. If you do, the image edges will appear jagged. The monitor might also have some three-letter designations.
COLOR INKJET PRINTER. This tells me that the printer will print color. The trade magazines tell us that up to 95% of all print outs need only to be in black and white. In an inkjet printer, the full color process is achieved by using 4 colors – red, blue, yellow and black. If all the colors are in ONE INK CARTRIDGE, studies show that the black gets used up first. Thus, make sure that the INK JET PRINTER you purchase has a least TWO (2) cartridges. One for black, and the second for the red, blue and yellow. One draw back with an INKJET printer is that when the printed pages come out of the printer, the printing is wet. If you touch the printed page, it will smear. Laser printers eliminate this problem, but they cost more money.
Windows XP with MS-Works Windows XP is an operating system. Without an operating system, the application programs such as WORD will not work. Think of the operating system as something IN THE MIDDLE. If you speak English and your friend speaks Spanish, you will need a TRANSLATOR who can be in the middle and translate for you. The translator acts as an operating system between you and the Spanish speaking person. MS-WORKs is a closely knit set of applications that all work together. The MS-WORKS program has word processing component, a spreadsheet component, a database component and a presentation component. For may people, this package can answer all your computer application needs. You do not need a chain saw to slice a loaf of bread.
Here is a rule of thumb for buying a computer. For $5000 you can get the latest and greatest leading edge machine. For $2500 you can get a very good solid unit that will do just about any computer project the average user needs to do. For $1000 you get a machine that will let you write letter, add a column of number, make a presentation, keep track of a list of addresses and surf the web. The components used on the lower cost machine may not be leading edge, but you can do many projects on this computer.
If you purchase a computer model that was introduced 6-12 months ago at $2500, with specifications “XYZ”, you should be able to find it for around $1000 today. This $1000 unit will be brand new, BUT it will be 6-12 months old.
Leading edge computing power used to double every 18 month. This is know as MOORE’s LAW, after the founder of INTEL, the maker of the computer chips that make your computer work. Then the time cycle went to 12 months. Today, the time from when you buy a computer for a certain price and the time it takes for a newer model to appear with TWICE as much horsepower is 6-9 months. Buy only the computing power you need and can afford. You do not need a chain saw to slice a loaf of bread.
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