Buying a home computer can be a bit like buying a car -- there are many makes and models, and many people willing to offer advice. As with buying a car, there are concerns of brand quality, the price of options, warranty and service issues and different ways to buy. Cars change from one model year to another. Computers change from one month to another.
Most of us have owned computers. Seventy percent of our incoming students have computers at their residences. So our new computer must be an improved version of our old computer. Of course that's not true. Modern computers are quite good at reading data written by older, differrent computers. Macintosh computers can read and write PC diskettes. Word processing programs can read files written with the competitor's product. Changing from a PC to a Mac is certainly possible, as is the reverse. Learning to use a different kind of computer can be quite enlightening.
You'll want to make sure your computer is adequate for today's tasks and next years and the year after that. After three years, you'll want to be thinking about your next computer. After five years, you'll need a new computer. One approach to lengthening the time before your computer is obsolete is to purchase the very fastest machine you can. You'll pay a very high premium for this taking this approach. Buying a machine that is not quite the fastest available will often cost you half the price of the fastest machine. The cost effectiveness of being right at the front edge is questionable.
To get a reasonable lifetime from your machine, buy at least a PowerMac or a 75 Mhz Pentium PC. Buy eight meg of RAM or more. You'll find that more RAM is the cheapest way to get a faster machine. Of course you'll be running the latest versions of the operating systems -- System 7.5 on the Mac and Windows '95 on the PC (recall that Windows '95 is not ready for use on the campus network, but it's fine for home use) --- .
You can't have enough disk space at home. 500 megabytes is a minimum, 1 gigabyte is a better choice. If you bought a computer last year, you should be able to upgrade your hard drive (or pay to have someone upgrade it). High density drives have fallen dramaticaly in price over the past year. You can now buy a 1 gigabyte drive with a three year warranty for under $400. You'll need the space because new programs are very large.
You'll need a 15" monitor. Don't buy a 14" monitor. 17" monitors are now reasonably priced alternatives. 3.5" diskette drives are standard equipment. You'll find 5.25" diskette drives hard to find. If you have data on 5.25" diskettes you should be planning to convert to 3.5" format now. Computers with 5.25" drives are becoming increasingly rare.
You can live without CD and sound, but why would you want to? Sound and CD are now standard on all Macintosh systems and should be standard on all home PCs. Make sure you get a quad-speed CD-ROM drive, and if you are buying a PC, make sure you have a Sound Blaster or SB-compatible sound system.
And you'll need a modem. 28.8K baud is now the standard. Don't settle for less. You need a high-speed modem to connect to the Internet.
If you need a printer, buy a personal laser printer. Apple and Hewlett-Packard make excellant models that will work with all your software and cost less than $600.
Buy a name brand computer. You'll get a better warranty and better service. It is not unusual for new computers to have problems "out of the box." Your dealer should replace parts quickly and cheerfully. The name brand computers have succeeded because of the quality of their machines and their service. Compaq, IBM, DELL and Gateway all sell excellant computers for home use. Computers that cost less typically do so for a reason --- inferior parts and inferior service. Low priced computers often have flimsy keyboards, blurry monitors and other parts that will quickly wear out and be unsuitable while they are wearing out.
Whatever you chose to buy, prepare for the inevitable price reductions, speed improvments and other added features that will be announced the week after your machine is delivered. Such is computing.
Buying a home computer can be quite different from buying computer for the office. We'll take up that topic next time.
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