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| In the beginning | ||
| When I bought my first home computer back in 1977, things were a lot different than they are today. First of all in those days, you had to buy a kit and put it together yourself. These kits weren't just a matter of adding a few boards to a motherboard and putting it in a case. In those days you had to solder every electronic component to the boards. My first computer had 4K of memory. (Yes, that's 4 K, not 4 MB. A 4K memory board (not just a chip) cost $100!) There was no such thing as a hard disk, in fact they didn't even have floppy disk drives. You used an audio tape recorder to load the programs to memory and it usually took about three times to get a program loaded. The computer didn't come with a monitor, you had to build that also. My first monitor had over 100 chips on it each of which had to be painstakingly soldered in with no mistakes. Amazingly it worked! | ||
| It was a few years later, before I had luxuries such as floppy disk drives, printers, and modems. My first floppy disk drive was a dual floppy unit which saved a little over 100K on each side. (By that time I had 16K of memory in my computer and thought it zoomed!) You had to flip the diskette over to write on the other side. My first printer printed in purple ink on 4" adding machine paper. Again I had to build it myself from a kit. My first modem was a 300 baud Pennywhistle acoustic coupler. After putting it together, I had to send it back to the manufacturer to get it calibrated before I could use it. You had to manually dial the telephone number, then put the headset into the rubber connectors after you heard the tone. It was years before I had a hard disk and my first one held a whopping 20MB. | ||
| Nowadays computers are much more powerful and putting them together at the component level is just about unheard of. The problem today is determining how much of a computer you need along with how much can you afford. | ||
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| What am I going to do with it? | ||
| If you have children, this fact alone should justify the cost of a computer. Children nowadays are growing up with computers, so that any child without access to a computer is going to be at a distinct disadvantage once they reach college age or are ready to enter the business world. Consequently I'll concentrate on some of the things you can do with a computer if you don't have children or yours are already grown. You can get some ideas just by looking at my web pages. I use it for surfing the Web, research, e-mailing relatives, games and entertainment, filling out tax forms, keeping track of investments, making airline reservations, paying bills, keeping track of bank accounts and credit cards, keeping records, writing letters, etc. You need to decide what your usage is going to be, because the type of things you're going to want to do with it dictate the size and power you're going to need. | ||
| Most people don't really have a clue what they're going to use their computer for, so I'll base the hardware configuration on a home computer for general usage. | ||
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| What should I buy? | ||
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| Where should I buy it? | ||
| The first thing I recommend is going out to Gateway or Dell's web sites and put together the system you want. Both of these sites have excellent pages for constructing your own computer, and then telling you what the cost is going to be. You really can't go wrong purchasing your computer from one of these two vendors and my first recommendation is that you purchase your computer from one of these two places. They both use high quality parts. The only drawback is that these are both mail order firms (although Gateway does have their new "Country Stores"), so you can't see your computer until it arrives, and if later you need maintenance on it (highly unlikely), you'll probably end up having to mail it back. If you want to see your computer first or are the type that when something happens to it, you want to drop it on someone's desk and say "fix it!", then you need to go to one of the electronic chains, such as Best Buy, or one of the computer superstore chains, such as CompUSA. I have used both of these places and had good experiences with both. I would still put together a system at Gateway or Dell anyway to use for price comparison. You will definintely be able to beat their prices, but take into account the quality factor. I do not recommend using one of the small, local computer stores or picking your computer up at one of the weekend computer shows, unless you really know what you're doing and aren't afraid to take the computer apart and put it back together. I have bought computers before at local computer stores that were good buys and came with a one year warranty, only to find that six month's later when I needed warranty service, the store was shut down. On the other hand, if you plan on doing your own maintenance and upgrading, the no-name clones from small, local computer stores are the way to go. | ||
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| Where do you buy your computers? | ||
| I haven't bought a total computer system in years. I buy upgrade parts at the weekend computer shows and upgrade the computers that I already own. Lately I'm buying more and more parts through the Internet. Before going to a computer show, I normally check out the latest issue of the Computer Shopper to get an idea of good prices. If I can't find what I want at the computer show, I check the prices at the local stores and depending on the results, may end up purchasing an item mail order. If I was going to buy myself a totally new computer, I'd probably get it from Gateway or Dell. Even though you can get some fantastic deals at the weekend computer shows, it's really "Buyer Beware!". You aren't going to save much money putting it together yourself and the experience can be very frustrating if you don't know what you're doing. (It can be very frustrating at times even if you do know what you're doing.) The advantage to putting one together yourself is that you can get the exact parts you want and if you can put it together yourself, you should be able to upgrade it or repair it yourself. The profit margins are very low at computer shows and you have no idea if what you are buying is new, reconditioned, seconds, or ... For external peripherals such as printers or modems or even monitors, I use Best Buy, CompUSA, or one of the big office supply chains such as Staples. | ||
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| Other Opinions | ||
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 refnor@mgfairfax.rr.com |
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| Last modified: 08-29-99 | ||
