I have a friend and client who recently purchased a new Dell PC. Now before I get started let me say for the record that I think Dell is a great PC manufacture and I do not have any malice toward them. With that said, my friends new PC was a Dell Dimension Desktop with a Pentium 4 processor. Totally excited to get his new PC my friend immediately began to load all his software programs and setup his Internet connection and E-mail. Unfortunately my friend was not very lucky because one of the very first times he checked his email he contracted a worm virus. Now I could and probably will write an article just about the worm virus, but for now I am going focus on the events that occurred afterward.

Since the virus had done so much damage we ultimately decided to format the hard drive and reload everything. While working with this new Dell my friend made the comment that he thought it ran a little slow for a brand new PC with 1.8 GHz and I soon agreed. After finishing the install I proceeded to inspect the PC further and to my surprise made a few disappointing discoveries.

When buying a new PC is it very easy to get wrapped up in the speed of the processor and this is what manufactures want you to do. But comparing this philosophy to other areas you end up with a purchasing strategy that would have you buy a car based solely on the size of the engine or a refrigerator based solely on the size of its compressor, not very wise and not very practical. Just like a car or a refrigerator a computer should be bought based on all of its features and not just one. Every part a PC helps to determine the overall speed of the machine.

So if this strategy is wrong what should you do? One of two things, seek professional help or become an "expert". The first option is by far the easiest, talk to someone you think you can trust and ask questions about all the features of the PC you want to buy. This person could be a computer consultant such as me, a Dell technician, or any other computer professional willing to assist your cause. The second option is somewhat more difficult, but allows you to make your own decision. Start by getting a few up to date PC magazine and visiting a few PC website, then get a feel for the market and see what is available and compare it to what you want.

Here is a quick list of component suggestions guaranteed to make your new PC faster.

1. Do not settle for a cut rate processor such as the AMD Duron or Intel Celeron. Get a first class processor such as the AMD Athlon or Intel Pentium 4.

2. There is more to a hard drive than size. Hard Drive rate in RPMs, data transfer, and seek time with the fastest drives topping off at 15,000 RPM, 75mb per second sustained data transfer, 3.2ms seek time

3. RAM comes in many forms such as SDRAM and DDR. DDR is the best bang for the buck.

4. Video Adapter - The Ge-Force 4 chipset is a sure winner along with the ATI Radeon

5. CD-ROM / CD-RW / DVD - The higher the "x" value the better. Good speeds CD-ROM 56x, CD-RW 48x(Write) 24x(Re-Write), DVD 12x

TechTalk
produced and distributed by DataStar Productions
written by Chad Hembree