Which PC to Buy?

Which Personal Computer (PC) to Buy?

I work in a Technical Support environment and this is a question that has been asked time and time again, which PC should I buy? PC’s these days are becoming so compact and powerful day after day, that you no longer see bulky and ugly systems resembling aliens and moving like a snail.  When deciding on which PC to get you have to ask yourself what are you going to use the machine for? Here are some ideas listed:

1. Word Processing: Typing letters, documents, essays, homework
2. Desk Top publishing (designing advertisements, brochures, leaflets etc)
3. Web Site Designing (working on pages like this)
4. Graphic designing  (Architectural drawings, designing circuit boards)
5. Database (lists of your video collection, business contacts)
6. Spreadsheets (graphs and charts)
7. Accounts and banking
8. Sending and receiving faxes
9. Browsing the internet
10. Checking your email/s
11. Educational: Using an encyclopaedia, other educational software
12. Playing music
13. Doing your own video editing
14. Connecting a musical instrument & making/editing music
15. Writing your own CDs
16. Security: Connecting your computer to an office or other security system
17. Storage: Scanning in documents for storage
18. Networking: connecting more than one computer together
19. Games: If possible make a note of what type of games (some have vastly different requirements to others)
20. Playing DVD movies

The typical or average user would purchase a PC for the following reason/s: A – O. and any brand of PC like Sony, HP, ACER or Dell among others would do the job with ease. But what I have found lately is that a lot of people are using the average computer to play a lot of games and watching movies (S-T). This I have seen caused a lot of problems; I would advise that if you want to play games get a game console and a DVD player to watch movies, the PC wasn’t designed for this. You can get a machine built for games if you want but it would cause your pocket to burn.

I readily tell people to buy Dell systems, why? I would be frank with you...Dell parts are easier to get and no hassle from Dell to replace defective parts under their warranty agreement unlike the big names like Sony, HP and Acer (I am speaking also as a customer outside of the BIG Apple). Apart from Dell systems you can consider to build a computer system but I strongly recommend a Dell....the deals are indeed great.

Daniel Bovell

A+, DIT, Webmaster