Intelligent Computer Shopping
When people find out I’m an Information Technology consultant for small businesses, they usually react in one of two ways. The first reaction is a disinterested sounding “Oh” followed by an immediate change of subject. The second reaction is lobbing a technical question my way about a person’s home or office PC. One of the questions I’m often asked is what things are important to consider when buying a new computer. Since the holidays will be here before you know it, here are a few tips to help you if you’re thinking about giving the gift of a new PC or laptop.
I’ve found that most people understand things like video, audio and printers fairly well. What can often be confusing are three basic PC components: hard drive, processor and memory or RAM. I’m going to share an analogy I use when explaining the purpose of these components. I can’t take credit for coming up with it, but over the years I’ve adapted it and sort of made it my own.
Hard Drive
Picture yourself sitting at a desk working. As you begin your work, you reach into your file drawer to get a file out. A PC’s hard drive is like the file drawer in your desk, because it’s where you store information when it’s not being used. These days the hard drive on a new PC might be between 500GB and 2TB (1000GB =1TB), which is enough room for a million photos, two hundred thousand songs, or over two hundred full length movies.
Processor
The PC’s processor would be like you, the person sitting at the desk, because it’s what actually does the work. Obviously, the faster your hands are the more work you can do. This sounds more straightforward than it actually is, because a processor has something called “cache”. Think of cache like an extra set of hands that can hold something you’ll need in a few seconds so that you don’t have to put it down on the desk. That would make you faster, right? It’s also possible for a 2.8GHz processor with lots of cache to be faster than a 3.2GHz processor without much cache. Keep in mind that software that uses lots of graphics requires more processing power.
Memory
Like the hard drive, a PC’s memory is also a storage area for data, but it’s where we put data when we *are* using it, so it’s like the top of our desk. Just like our desk drawer holds much more than the top of our desk, we need much more space on our hard drive than we do in memory. The most important consideration when deciding how much memory we need is the kind of work we’re doing.
If we’re writing a letter at our desk we need very little space, just enough for the paper itself, an envelope, a stamp and room to set our pen down. On the other hand if we’re going to be working on something like a scrapbook, we’ll need a much larger area so we can spread out photos and pages and books and scissors and everything else used in scrapbooking. I’ve watched my wife spread out all of her scrapbooking supplies and occupy an entire table!
As with our desk, PC documents consisting mainly of text take up very little room in memory. If we’re working with photos or video, we’re going to need a lot more memory. Keep in mind that as in scrapbooking, where the tools we use in our work sit on our desk along with the scrapbook, on a PC the programs we use to view or edit our work take up memory space right along with the work itself. These days, it’s not uncommon to buy a PC with 2GB, 4GB or even 8GB of memory.
I hope these brief descriptions can arm you to at least ask the right questions as you shop for a new computer!
I’ve found that most people understand things like video, audio and printers fairly well. What can often be confusing are three basic PC components: hard drive, processor and memory or RAM. I’m going to share an analogy I use when explaining the purpose of these components. I can’t take credit for coming up with it, but over the years I’ve adapted it and sort of made it my own.
Hard Drive
Picture yourself sitting at a desk working. As you begin your work, you reach into your file drawer to get a file out. A PC’s hard drive is like the file drawer in your desk, because it’s where you store information when it’s not being used. These days the hard drive on a new PC might be between 500GB and 2TB (1000GB =1TB), which is enough room for a million photos, two hundred thousand songs, or over two hundred full length movies.
Processor
The PC’s processor would be like you, the person sitting at the desk, because it’s what actually does the work. Obviously, the faster your hands are the more work you can do. This sounds more straightforward than it actually is, because a processor has something called “cache”. Think of cache like an extra set of hands that can hold something you’ll need in a few seconds so that you don’t have to put it down on the desk. That would make you faster, right? It’s also possible for a 2.8GHz processor with lots of cache to be faster than a 3.2GHz processor without much cache. Keep in mind that software that uses lots of graphics requires more processing power.
Memory
Like the hard drive, a PC’s memory is also a storage area for data, but it’s where we put data when we *are* using it, so it’s like the top of our desk. Just like our desk drawer holds much more than the top of our desk, we need much more space on our hard drive than we do in memory. The most important consideration when deciding how much memory we need is the kind of work we’re doing.
If we’re writing a letter at our desk we need very little space, just enough for the paper itself, an envelope, a stamp and room to set our pen down. On the other hand if we’re going to be working on something like a scrapbook, we’ll need a much larger area so we can spread out photos and pages and books and scissors and everything else used in scrapbooking. I’ve watched my wife spread out all of her scrapbooking supplies and occupy an entire table!
As with our desk, PC documents consisting mainly of text take up very little room in memory. If we’re working with photos or video, we’re going to need a lot more memory. Keep in mind that as in scrapbooking, where the tools we use in our work sit on our desk along with the scrapbook, on a PC the programs we use to view or edit our work take up memory space right along with the work itself. These days, it’s not uncommon to buy a PC with 2GB, 4GB or even 8GB of memory.
I hope these brief descriptions can arm you to at least ask the right questions as you shop for a new computer!