Buying a PC is a duanting excersise hopefully this guie will help you to find the perfect PC and make your experience a good one.
Manufacturer
I would stick to a major manufacturer, hp, dell, Toshiba, Lenovo, even Acer is pretty good.
For processors anything from Intel core I3 is your best bet. AMD processors are not a good buy at this point in time, although there video cards are fine. I wouldn't see a need for a quality video card in this case.
Processor
The processor is what does the real work, but it also relis on a lot of other compoenents. The core 2 stuff was product end in 2010 and the product line has been around since 2006. I would stick with anything from the Intel core i line of things. This is a much better product, built off of new platforms. The core I3 is for the regular everyday PC user, email and Internet. Core i5 is for the novice power user, hi def movies and power user of email and Internet. Core i7 is for the hard core user, video editing, graphic design, power email and Internet user. Core i3 and core i5 is where most people are going to end up
Memory:
If you compare your memory to a desk it's The size of the workspace of your desk. The bigger the desk the more work you can do at one time. If your desk is tiny then you constantly have to be taking stuff in and out of the drawers to get anything done. This adds time and becomes a headache. ON the opposite ending of a huge desk doesn't really help past a point because you have to get up and walk everwhere.
So finding the perfect medium is key, which is usually around 4gb. Don't buy them through the manufacturer. Go to a place like crucial.com and select the size you need. They guarantee that when you use there pc finder, it will fit your pc. It's really simple to put in and you can follow our guide for doing this.
Hard drive:
We will stick with the desk analogy, it's your filling cabinet. It's rather slow to pull stuff out of or put stuff in compared to your desk surface. But because the desk surface can't hold everything you have to put it somewhere. Having a bigger hard drive does not mean that your work goes faster it just mean you can hold more of your old work. Also storing a lot of things in your hard drive does not make your work go slower.
Don't worry about this compenent to much. Most people will be happy with anything 500GB or above. You can usually buy a aftermarket hard drive with more space and pay someone to put it in cheaper then the upgrades from dell or hp. A hard drive replacement is a little more difficult to do then memory but is not extraordinarily difficult.
Video card:
The video card help to display anything visual to your monitor. If you have a better one it help to aleviate some pressure of the processor. This would help when watching movies, looking at graphics, or doing any sort of graphic editing. Usually I always recommend a seperate video card where the budget allows. Anything from nvidia or Amd/Ati will be an upgrade from the onboard intel chip.
Don't buy refurbished
I usually don't shy away from refurbished but i don't recommend it on a PC. At the cost it's not worth it. Hard drives and fans with moving parts just wear out after time and even get brittle just sitting on a shelf. If the refurbishedwas originally sold 2 years ago, that's 2 years less of hard drive reliability. Traditional hard drives only have a life expectancy of 3 to 5 years. Solid state drives are better then that but are much more expensive. This hard drive is the most important piece to a business PC. If that goes it's the most down time and money lost.
Where to buy
I always tell peopel to go to Dell or HP and spec out the pc they can live with and the PC they want. Print it out then compare it to any deals they find. If your bargain shopping a PC from a big box store might be your best bet, websites can't beat there random sales. If your not going to put the time in the websites are always better, goto the manufacterer you have decided on and buy it. Check coupon websites like retailmenot.com for coupons and rebate offers.
Sample of a base PC
I spec'ed out PC from dell, a vostro 260, from there business line and I came to $329. You can't beat that.
It's a bottom of the line PC but will perform much better then older pcs. Plus with there business pcs you get 15 months free antivirus from Trend (>$50 value).
There is free shipping for the holidays from dell as well.
If you think you need an extra 2GB here is one from crucial for 14.99. Half the cost then upgrading through dell. Upgrades are better to buy separately.
Laptops
Follow the same guide for laptops as you would for a PC except for just a couple crucial things
Size and battery:
Laptops are made to move around and be on your lap. If you get a large pc you will hate it and it will hate you. Get the smallest laptop you can live with. They always say that when you find a TV you like buy the next size larger, do the opposite for laptops and you will be happy. Buy a 14 or 15 inch laptop and you will have less heat to make you sweat, less girth to pick up, and exponentially better battery life. Anything larger then a 15.4/16 inch laptop buy a desktop. THe other option would be to buy a monitor that you can hook up when you need the bigger realistate. Please trust me on this one you will have a much better experience.
Accessories:
Buy a good portable wireless mouse. The touchpads on laptops are terrible and this wil imporve your experience immensly.
Good bag, just one bad drop in the car or someone will call an end for the laptop; it can also double as storage. A half decent bag can be as little as $15 so it's worth it.
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