Home Desktop ComputersFind out how to get Home Desktop Computers at the best price and find special deals that can save you money on your next purchase. Home Desktop Computers are different than business computers, many are designed with more media and home entertainment features. Many business class computers are less powerful and designed for documents and spreadsheet work. Companies want small footprint and economical units rather than high end units. Video requirements, screen resolution, music abilities, and speakers are much more important to home users. Hard drive space is much more of an issue with home desktop computers too. With music and video files being so large, home users need lots of hard drive storage. Business users normally save to a server (for baking up data in central location) hiding some where so they don't need large hard drives. Large screens can be on both types of units but home users need high resolution and much better speakers too. Home User Requirements: Video cards with at least 512K of dedicated on card memory, 32 bit color, and at least a 18 inch LCD monitor with high refresh rate (120 Hz on newer screens). A fast hard drive with a decent cache (any with 7200 rpm access and 32 MB cache is good). A music card that can handle surround sound and speakers to match (creative makes several cards with high end capabilities form $30 to $150 and Logitech makes some good surround sound speakers from $50 to $150). Intel's new Core i5 processor is a quad processor which packs about 731 million transistors into a chip about half the size of a postage stamp. This is the bad boy right now but you will pay dearly for it so you might want to stick with Intel’s Core 2 Duo and AMD’s Athlon X2 processors which offer the best price performance range. The amount of RAM (4 gigs is good) and type (DDR is the best for the buck now) plus speed of at least 200 MHz (this is dependent on your chip speed). Cost Issues: Cost can vary wildly depending on season or current special sales. I'd keep my eyes on the weekend newspapers for specials and look at major computer store promotions. But don't forget to read the fine print, many units might be close outs or even refurbished units. Might not make a difference if they still have the same warranty as new but always double check. A low end desktop computer can be had for as little as $300 and as high as $3000. The sweet spot, best bang for the buck, is around $7-800 most of the time. What About Reliability: Most large manufacturers all buy the cheapest parts they can, it's the nature of the beast. But there are some that really go low and their failure rate can be very high. Check with online websites for reviews, ask friends and family what they have and like. Consumer Reports often has computers reviewed but form some reviews I've seen I wouldn't depend on that source alone (they've been way off base on several I've seen). Try several sources and get some real world opinions to get a balanced measure of reliability. Necessary Accessories: Sometimes bargain priced models are missing some important accessories so be careful. If you would prefer to choose your own brand of video or music card and don't care what comes in the home desktop unit, consider that you will need to add that to over all price. Also consider that many of the big name home desktop computers come with brand name components but not necessarily the same high end quality models. Once again always check the fine print, the devil may be in the details and you want to make sure you know what you're getting.. |
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