SHOPPING FOR A COMPUTER

 

This article will guide a buyer through the process of buying a computer. It will explain how not to get ripped off, wether a warranty is worth buying or not, and how to shop for a computer, and just how important it is to do your research.

 

 

 

 

 

What TO LOOK FOR

 

I'd like to start first of all, by saying  that when you are shopping for a computer, the most important factor you must consider, is what the computer is going to be used for. Some people use the computer for nothing more than browsing the internet and typing word/excell documents. Those people will be just fine with a low-end computer with no more than 256mb of memory, a celeron/sempron processor, and maybe a 40gig hard drive. On the other side though, there are the people who love to game with all the eye candy possibly known to human kind, and need a super powerfull computer, something along the lines of 2gigs of memory, an AMD FX processor/Pentium EE processor, a hard drive spinning at 10,000 RPM, and a $700 graphics card. The second thing to consider, is your budget. Basically, it goes like this, the more you spend, the nicer/faster/fuller of features your computer is going to be. But, if you don't wan't to end up with a computer that will be obsolete in 2 months, you MUST DO YOUR RESEARCH. Probably the most effective teqnuique for not getting ripped off. The more research you do, the better the deal you'll get. The level of computing power needed, goes something like this: (from most to none)

1. Gaming

2. Video/Photo Editing

3. Music listening/burning

4. E-mail/Office/Internet browsing.

 

RESEARCH AND CHEAP COMPUTERS.

 

In my experience of being a tech. for more than 6 years, I can tell you that technology updates at an extremely fast pase, and to avoid buying something that is going to be obsolete or is already obsolete, DO YOUR RESEARCH. Look at all of the high-end computers, and write down all of the little features such as "lightscribe" and "lcd/TFT monitor", then try to buy a computer that has the most features within your budget. Also, if your budget is smaller, do take note that buying the cheapest system, is almost always the worst thing to do. Why? because the cheaper the computer, the cheaper the parts are made, making the computer alot less reliable, and unstable. So even if you do pay the least right then in there, it will actually come to be more expensive then the decent computers, because in in the long run, all of the service charges for the repairs/part replacements will add up and end up costing you more than if you would have just bought the next level up computer. How do you know when a computer is cheap? Well unless you haven't heard the expression, "If its too good to be true, it is" You probably won't notice any difference in the product that costs $45 and the one that costs $50, but in the long run, something will always pop up and haunt you, such as, now days if you buy a part from Hong Kong, as opposed to Japan, chanses are, later on down the road something will allways be defective(or even fake) so if the price difference between the cheap computer/part is almost none as opposed to the brand name one, those little $5 will save you lots of pain, suffering, and money, later on down the road.

 

WHEN TO BUY

 

Another thing to consider, is when to buy the computer. The worst thing to do, is to buy part by part until you have a complete system. It might seem like a good idea, but you would only be shooting yourself in the foot. This is because by the time you have all the parts you wanted, chanses are really high that the part you bought 3 weeks ago, now costs $100 less and you now could get a better part for less money. The best thing to do, is to save up untill you have sufficient funds to buy everything at once. Not only will you get a better deal, but you'll also save money on shipping and such.

 

WARRANTIES

 

Wether to buy a warranty or not, actually depends on your knowledge of computers. if you are almost computer illiterate, and you've just made an important investment, the computer that comes with the best warranty makes all of the difference. Most advanced/experienced computer users, could go without the expensive warranty, simply because the most common parts that go wrong are the power supply, hard drive, and optical media drive. And since an advanced computer user will know how to install these, a $300 warranty will be a waste of money if the part that broke costs $80. All this though, is much different for laptops. I reccomend, that if possible, get the extended warranty with the laptop, simply because they are a lot more delicate, a lot harder to work with(usually opening it to work on it will void the warranty), and the parts will allways be a pain in the neck to find, and the cost is even more surprising. When you are dealing with a laptop, stores and shops will allways gouge the heck out of you for a part, and a lot of the times, the part itself will cost half, or even almost as much as the laptop itself.

 

Thank you all, and I really hope my article helped.