What to look for when buying a mid-range computer

So you want to buy a new computer, but are confused by all the options? Is that $299 computer at the local big box store really a good deal?

If all you need to do is get your email, read some news pages, and do the occasional instant message, any computer made within the last 3 years will be more than enough for you.

But what if you want to do more? Want to organize your pictures from that new digital camera? Need to burn home movies to DVD? Here's what to look for.

RAM

RAM (Random Access Memory) is the memory space your computer uses for any active files or tasks. A lot of RAM is good, more is always better. The number one thing to look for, however, is the ability to add more RAM later. Most low end machines say they have 2GB of ram, but a closer inspection will show that there are only two slots and both of them are used, making it costlier to upgrade later.

You should look for a computer that has at least 2GB of RAM and one to three empty slots. If you plan to do a lot of video editing or gaming, make sure to get no less than 4 GB.

Lastly, don't be fooled into paying more than you have to for a memory upgrade. Unless you are already paying $1500 or $2000 for a computer, that $100 stick of high performance or high speed gaming optimized RAM will do nothing for you. These are just gimmicks to get you to pay more. A good stick of 2GB RAM can be found for $25.

Hard Drive

The harddrive is where all of your files are saved. Harddrive prices have been dropping as fast as their sizes have been increasing. But how much space do you need?

The average harddrive sold now is 500GB. How much will that hold? The average MP3 is about 4MB. A high quality digital photo can be up to 10MB. A one hour home movie is about 500 MB.
With a 500GB drive, you could hold:

• 10,000 MP3s
• 20,000 Digital Photos
• 200 1 hour Home Movies

And you would still have room to spare.

Processor

The processor or CPU (Central Processing Unit) is the workhorse of the computer. The faster the processor, the more you can do at any given time. With a slow processor, you might have some speed issues if you listened to an MP3 while browsing Myspace or Facebook. With a fast processor, you could burn a home movie to DVD, touch up digital photos, check email, play a video game, and browse the web, all at once.

So what makes a processor fast? How do you compare one to another? Processors used to be judged solely on their clock frequency. Clock frequency is simply how many cycles the processor could complete in one second. 2.4Ghz means that a processor can do 2,400,000,000 cycles in just one second.

Today, processors come in a variety of types, speeds, and configurations. Clock frequency alone is not a reliable judge of performance unless you are comparing two very similar chips.

For most uses, an Intel Core2 Duo 74xx or AMD Phenom 84xx should give you enough speed for the next two years.

Video Cards

Unless you do any significant amount of gaming, the video card should be your lowest priority, but you still want to make sure you get one that works for you.

The number one thing to avoid in video cards is integrated graphics. This is where the GPU (Graphic Processing Unit) and memory is on the motherboard. These video cards are very slow and will use part of your system memory.

What you want to look for is a system with at least an nVIDIA GeForce 96xx or an ATI Radeon 46xx. Either of these card series should be able to handle most games (except for the very latest ones) and should also help graphic intensive operating systems like Windows Vista or Windows 7 run smoothly as well.

The other thing to look for in a video card is memory. Video cards have their own RAM for storing frequently accessed data that will need to be quickly rendered again. You'll want to make sure you have a card with at least 512 to 1024MB of RAM.