Before buying a new computer

[Class-A]

What is the Main Purpose of the Computer
If you have made the decision to buy a computer, there must be a reason or need that you have to get one, other than I have $1200 burning a hole in my pocket and I need to get rid of it! A good reason for buying a computer would be something like writing papers for a class or keeping track of your finances or business. A bad reason for buying a computer would be something like your best friend has one or everyone else you know has one, because you're probably never going to use it and you end up with a $1200 paper weight.

In the initial stages of determining what sort of computer you need to get, at some point you need to ask yourself, what am I going to be using the computer for? Whether you intend to write papers for class, surf the World Wide Web, or just play computer games, you need to have an idea of what the minimum requirements the computer needs to have. If all you intend to do is just write letters using a DOS based word processing program, a 386 or 486 system with a couple megabytes of memory is more than adequate. If you want to use a Windows version of some word processing program, then your requirements go up a bit, particularly on the amount of RAM memory and hard disk space. If you want to be able to surf the Web and play some of the multimedia on-line virtual reality games, then you need a higher-end system, with more memory, more disk space, and a modem or network card to connect to the Internet.

Once you determine what you need the computer for, the next question that you need to ask yourself is how much money I can afford to spend. If you are looking for a Pentium 4 based system, expect to pay around $800 to $1000 for a good quality system including software and a monitor. You will no doubt see systems advertised for less than this, but there is a good reason why these systems are cheaper and we will discuss this a little later in this document.

Buy as much PC as you can afford. Don't cut corners on the main system unit (monitor, processor, memory, disk space, etc.). If you are short on cash, hold off on the printer or a software application or two that you really don't need right away.

And always remember that you get what you pay for