Do It Yourself

I hate the term 'Computer Illiterate." I hate the person who coined the term 'computer illiteracy.' This is a ridiculous notion created by computer dorks that makes smart people, like professors, doctors, even rocket scientists feel small and stupid. For goodness sakes, half my customers are literally rocket scientists. They'll come in looking insecure, stressed out, and the first thing out of their mouth is "I am computer illiterate." I challenge the computer geek, I call them computer 'dorks', who coined "computer illiterate" to a boxing match. Bring it on!

If you know what a computer is, what it's supposed to do, and how to turn the thing on, you're computer LITERATE. Don't let any weird looking badly dressed overweight social recluse tell you anything else. Just because he can shoot stupid little virtual monsters with a virtual pop gun won't help him survive in the real world, and it sure as heck doesn't make him better than you.

Defrag defrag defrag... blah blah blah. Every time someone comes in my computer store and something's wrong, invariably, the first thing they'll say is "but I defragged my hard drive last week." People, defragging a hard drive will not fix your computer. As a matter of fact, you don't even have to defrag your hard drive any more. Windows Vista does it on its own. Defragging a hard disc will improve an average computer users' performance a slight bit. As a matter of fact, Microsoft itself has determined that defragging your disc will produce negligible performance boosts. The bottom line is, if your computer is slow, you've got a problem that defragging won't fix.

It's possible that something you downloaded may have had a hijacker attached to it, another program that installed itself without your knowledge or expressed permission. And the more programs that run at one time, the slower your computer will seem. Do you have any idea how much memory your computer has?

People get the word "memory" confused. When we're talking about your computer's memory, we're talking about your computer's "short term" memory. Think of it like this, when people do multiple things at once, like walk, talk on the phone, and chew gum, we're using our subconscious memory in our brains to do all those things at once. That's roughly equivalent to a computer's short term memory, also known as "RAM", or random access memory. Your computer was designed to handle many tasks at once, including running an operating system like Windows, which takes several different and separate processes at once. Then your antivirus program should be running in the background, using some more memory. And your internet connection uses a little bit, the software that runs your sound and display uses some, and finally, your games use a bunch of memory. So before you know it, you're using all kinds of memory, and that's where things begin to slow down.

Your hard drive is your computer's "long term" memory. Think of it like this, when you sit and try to remember things, like recipes or how to do something, you're accessing the long term part of your brain. So your hard drive stores everything your computer needs to permanently remember. Hard drives are measured in gigabytes, or millions of bytes. Most computers are sold with hard drives anywhere from 40 to 500 gigabytes of storage.

It doesn't hurt to defragment your hard drive, but again, if your computer is slow, fragmentation is rarely the cause. You probably ran out of the short term memory, again, known as RAM. Most computers sold today come with at least 1 gigabyte, or 1,000 megabytes of RAM. Windows XP will usually run well with at least 512 megabytes of ram, but you'll need at least a gigabyte with Windows Vista. The more short term memory you have, the better your computer will run.

First of all, let me clear the air. I don't sell many computers, so I don't have much to gain in writing this article. This is my opinion based on my personal experience and all the broken computers I've seen over the past decade.

So what should you get? A Dell, HP, Compaq, Gateway, E-machine, Lenovo, or something built by your dorky neighbor in his garage? Which one's better? Well, honestly, there's not all that much different in a typical computer. HP and Compaq are one company; and now Gateway, E-machines, and Acer are one big happy family. Lenovo, now its own Chinese company, is what's left of IBM's ignorant business move of ignoring the personal computer market when everyone else was making millions. So what's the difference? Personally, I believe there are four guys working in a garage somewhere in Shanghai making all the parts for all of today's name-brand PCs. The motherboards, processors, hard drives, memory, fans, and software are all very similar across all brands; the only thing different is the sticker they slap on the case.

If I had to choose a desktop PC, based on what we've seen over the past decade, I'd probably choose Dell or Lenovo. And not their home class PCs, only their business class computers. Why? Business PCs have to be more robust and reliable, because businesses purchase thousands of computers at once, providing a nice profit for PC makers, so they've got more of an incentive to use more reliable motherboards and power supplies. Dell and Lenovo business class PCs cost a bit more, but they'll last longer, and they'll run better.

So where do you purchase your new business class PC? You can't get a Dell Optiplex or Latitude at Staples or Walmart, so you've got to order online or at one of their kiosks in some malls. Some of our customers have reported product and customer service problems when ordering on one of the more popular reseller websites (especially one with a feline influence), so we recommend ordering directly from the manufacturer.

What should you look for in terms of processing power, memory, and storage? Popular office programs have been completely eclipsed by processing speeds; even today's lower end processors are generations faster than any office or email program requires. Intel and AMD are neck in neck in processing speed and reliability, yet AMD is still a bit less expensive.

DDR2 memory is today's standard. It's inexpensive, and there's not a whole lot of difference in brands anymore. Make sure you get a lot, especially if you're running Windows Vista, at least 2 Gigabytes. Windows 32-bit operating systems (at least 90% of what's still used by home and business users today) can only recognize up to 3.5 GB of memory, so no sense going higher than that.

Most computers are sold with more hard drive storage space than any human could use. Although your new PC will have at least a 160 Gigabyte hard drive, an 80 Gigabyte hard drive is more than enough storage for a typical Internet and email user.

Is Windows Vista really bad? Since it's common knowledge that only bad news sells, of course the typical media moron who knows next to nothing about computers is going to report all the negative things he can conjure about Microsoft's newest operating system, Windows Vista. I've been running Vista for almost two years now, and I like it. It's pretty, and it's not all that different from XP in its functionality. It's more stable and secure than Windows XP. Vista's main complaint is it's compatibility issues with older software and hardware. If you think about it, why waste time writing drivers that work with a cheap $49 inkjet printer that's gonna fail in a few months anyway? Don't get me started on inkjet printers... Windows Vista is a fine option for a new computer. In most cases, the new PC you purchase will have more than enough horsepower to run everything you'll need it to run. And if you do need more power, it'll be more memory, and that's an inexpensive upgrade.

Dell Optiplex 330 (business class PC) with any Pentium Core-Duo processor (all are plenty fast), 2 gigabytes of DDR2 RAM, Windows Vista Home Basic, 250 gigabyte SATA Hard Drive, 250 gigabyte external USB hard drive (for backups), and a DVD reader/writer. Comes standard with a nice 3 year warranty (home PCs have a one year warranty). And like most large computer manufactures, be prepared to spend hours on the phone with broken-English speaking Pakistani tech support if something goes wrong.

Before we discuss laptop recommendations, we need to establish a few ground rules.

• Laptop Law 1: Anything that can be moved will be dropped.
• Laptop Law 2: Anything that can be moved can be stolen.
• Laptop Law 3: The average hardware lifespan of a laptop is approximately one-half that of its desktop counterpart.
• Laptop Law 4: The average laptop costs about 1.5 times more than its desktop counterpart, and costs 3 times more to fix.

Laptops are fragile. They're thin and light, so there's no luxury of impact insulation in a laptop. Portable PCs tend to use proprietary parts that have to be ordered from the manufacturer, if you can get them at all. For some strange reason, Sony won't sell anyone their spare parts; they want you to prepay a considerable flat fee of either $300 or $800, then send it back to them. That's why we avoid Sony.

Laptops are now as powerful as desktops. All that speed generates a tremendous amount of heat. In a typical desktop computer, you've got adequate ventilation. No such luck in a laptop; all that same heat has nowhere to go, so it eventually cooks itself.

With that said, the Toshiba Satellite A Series is a solid yet affordable laptop computer. I've had a few of these for about two years each, and they're all still in use. I've bumped them, scratched them, even dropped them, and I still can't kill the beasts. For a little more cash, the Dell Latitude business-class notebook is pretty solid, as are most of the Lenovo series notebooks.