Computer shopping

Laptop or Tower PC

A computer shopper may already instinctively know their personal preference when it comes to chosing either a laptop or PC. Space is probably one of the biggest factors as a Tower PC will require a desk. Laptops on the other hand can be easily used on your lap on the sofa or a desk but unlike a tower they can be removed easily. Laptops in the past never had the ability to run the most demanding games but these days they do. So if you want a gaming PC don't shrug of laptops just yet. If portability isn't an issue then a PC could be the favoured choice. You're far more likely to get a faulty computer fixed by a local company than a laptop and for a much cheaper price.

Desktops and Towers

This section of computing is the most versatile. From the outside they can look very similar but take a look inside and it's a very different story. A basic computer for internet use will have very different parts to a gaming computer. An interenet PC will have what is known as entry level components meaning that they are the slowest parts available on the market and consequently most often the cheapest. The reason why these are used is based on the speed of the slowest area of data transfer, the broadband itself. Yes, there are no components available on the market that can run as slow as your broadband.
The good thing about Desktop and Tower PC's are their versatility. If you are an interent user and decided for example you want to run a 3D graphics package on the machine which is above the spec of your computer then you can simply upgrade it avoiding the expense of another new PC.

Laptops and Tablets

Laptops and tablets have come a long way in recent years much more so than Desktops and Towers and this can be seen in laptop sales. In the last decade they've halved in price and jumped in leaps and bounds in the specification department. They can be used on the lap in front of the telly or if you prefer the desktop feel a docking station with plugged in keyboard, mouse, printer, external storage and bigger screen with a single click. Walk into a department store and you can see a large array of laptops to chose from. Have a look at the build quality and press the keys to get the feel of the keyboard. The screen size is limited to the laptop size so there are decisions to be made here too. One feature I like to look for is the mousepad disable. This doesn't appear on all laptops and does get very annoying when typing as your hand is over the mousepad making the cursor jump all over the place. On to tablets. ipads are the most popular but they are now facing some competition as others want a chunk of this action. Size and battery life are good selling points for tablets but they do have their downfalls. There is no optical drive for viewing CD/DVD contents, the keyboard input is via a the screen which to some is slow and cumbersome especially to touch typists. Not only this screens are expensive to replace and are prone to dead pixels, backlight problems and accidental damage. I also find the screen size often too small and regularly have to zoom in and out. On the plus side if you are out on the road these devices can be carried around very easily and connected to airport and hotel wireless LANs very easily.

Computer components and what to look for

Processors: There are a range of CPU's to chose from with the two best sellers being AMD and Intel. The processor is the heart of the computer performing the tasks as instructed by the computer operator. A CPU can be measured by its clock speed these days in GHz (gigahertz), the amount of cache (internal RAM) inside the processor, the number of cores (the more cores the more simultaneous instructions can be performed) and the number of threads (the number of stored ordered instructions that a CPU can hold at any one time).
Here are the Laptop processor details of Intel models currently on the market
Here are the Desktop processor details of Intel models currently on the market
Here is a comparison chart comparing individual AMD and Intel CPUs

Hard disks and other media: The hard disk is where the operating system is stored along with all of your data. Considerations here are relatively straight forward; you buy a disk that is big enough to store all of your data with plenty of space for future data. Entry level SATA drives are around 500GB (gigabytes) these days but it's not impossible to get 320GB and 160GB for roughly the same price. The largest hard disk storage capacity is in the region of 2TB (terabyte) or 2,000GB. There are two other types of hard disk used in computing: the SSD (solid state drive) and the SAS (serial attached SCSI) drive. Both are more money than the most commonly used SATA (Serial Advanced Technology Attachment). Both SAS drives and SSD's are faster than SATA but both come in smaller disk sizes. To get round this problem a PC with SSD will have the operating system and programs loaded on it with a second SATA drive to hold all the data. SAS drives are more commonly used in servers where RAID will give the extra disk capacity needed.

Memory: Applying a few guidelines here will soon get you up to speed with this section. RAM is where everything is run from when the PC is being used. The more RAM the faster the PC will run because it won't then have to use the hard disk which slows the machine down. If using windows xp 500MB to 2GB is the preferred and windows Vista/7 2GB upwards is the preferred here. RAM comes in different speeds and although the performance is hardly noticeable it is adviseable to get the fastest for your motherboard.