Building a Computer (part one)
This is the beginning of a series where I drone on and on about computer stuff. I am putting this in the IT category so my Mom won’t have to read it.
Part one: Decisions decisions
The biggest part of building a computer is planning what you are going to do with it. Don’t say everything, that is a cop out. Word processing and email only? You going to do anything that is “hard” for a computer (video editing, sound editing, gaming, programming, running Vista)?
Regular old run of the day typing up papers and sending emails takes almost no computer power at all. Now what you want to TYPE them in, application wise, is a pretty big deal.
Are you dependent on Microsoft?
I don’t know if you realize it or not, but this is a big factor. I have 2-3 year old PC’s that run Linux variations and run almost as fast as my brand new state of the art job I just built. I don’t know the real reason why Microsoft products suck PC cycles so bad, but its just a thing you get used to. If you have used windows forever and want to try linux download a live distribution (meaning you don’t install it you run it from your CD drive) and run it. Knoppix is pretty much defacto for this purpose alone. I don’t endorse Knoppix above being a good live distribution, for full installations Ubuntu is the way to go.
The next question thats a biggie and may affect your Microsoft dependance is:
Do you want to play games? This is a biggie. Linux is almost completely void of games. I mean there are more and more showing up, but seriously, compared to windows, they are pretty limited. If you have a game that you absolutely have to have.. Probably better check and see if it works on linux. If not, you better have some money cause licenses alone for the Microsoft software is going to cost you.
Last question for planning really is:
How fast do you want to go? This is also important, there are some way-to-freaking-fast processors out right now, and they are going down in price for the new way-way-to-freaking-fast processors to have room in the market. Processors and RAM will be your friends. To a lesser extent will be your hard drive, but those aren’t bad money wise now anyway. This will change when the “solid state” hard drives start poking through at prices you/me can afford.