Computer Shopping

[marcmagus]

[Inspired by rm's laptop search, shield_toad111's laptop search, my own recent netbook purchase, and assorted conversations I've had.]

If you're in the market for a new computer, a bit of research and willingness to open the back and install simple upgrades yourself can save you a lot of money. Computers are still often really expensive, so these numbers can be significant.

Do the Research

Most importantly, you need to know what you need. What is this computer going to be used for? What are the system requirements for the most power-hungry program you're going to run? Are you going to/do you need to run multiple power-hungry programs simultaneously? How big a display do you need? Does it need to be portable?

With the recent spate of inexpensive netbooks on the market, do you really want a high-power laptop? You may want to seriously consider buying a desktop for your primary workhorse computer and a netbook for portability. Netbooks can be cheap because they're only powerful enough to do really basic tasks (but do you need to do more than check email and look at websites when you're away from your desk?). Miniaturization is expensive, so you pay a premium for your power with laptops, and the portability ends up being limited by the size of your display anyway.

As an example, I run a two-year-old discount desktop with a nice 22" display as my primary computer. It's plenty powerful for what I do when the OS is configured correctly, though my hard drive space is getting a little tight. If I want to fix that, I can just drop in an additional hard drive and keep running with what I've got. If I decide I want more display power, I can get a bigger display, and even run with multiple displays to really get a lot of information in front of me. For portability, I recently acquired a Dell Mini 9 netbook. It's tiny, with only a 9" display and a little keyboard, but it's got enough power to do all the stuff I ever want to do on the road [or on the sofa], and can even show video without any trouble (though it can't use optical media directly). I've put $250 into the netbook in total. According to the specs, it weighs 2.28 lbs., which makes it really easy for all sorts of travel.

Anyway, it's important to figure out what you really need and what you really want, so you can start figuring out what you're shopping for. You probably don't need bleeding edge top-of-the-line stuff, and if you get technology that's a year or two old you'll pay a lot less (you may have to upgrade a year or two sooner, but I believe you'll still be ahead of the curve cost-wise in the long term.

If you're planning to do any upgrading from the base spec [and I encourage it, see below], make sure the computer you're looking at is capable of being upgraded to what you intend. Motherboards will impose a hard limit on what CPU speed you can go to and how much RAM you can support, and the number and type of connections for hard drives and expansion slots may become a limiting factor. Make sure there's enough headroom for the growth you plan on (but weigh against the advantages of accepting the quick obsolescence times these days and moving on).

Upgrade It Yourself

Many computers have user-upgradable parts. This is a feature you should really look for so you can extend the useful life of your computer, but it's also one that should end up saving you money in the short term.

You can often save a good deal of money by buying the cheapest system your manufacturer makes available and upgrading it yourself to make it more powerful. Even though you may be tossing the part you pull out to replace [if you can't find someone who'll buy it off you somewhere], they charge enough of a premium on a lot of these things that it's worth it.

The biggest culprit is RAM. It may no longer be true that you can never have too much RAM, but it's also become so cheap that it's an easy upgrade to do. Make sure the system you buy supports the amount of RAM you eventually want and has user-replaceable RAM [many do], and see if you can buy appropriate modules from a third-party [you usually can]. The replacement is usually really easy, just make sure to take anti-static precautions when you're handling things. The vast array of options can be a little bewildering, but at least one online store, Crucial has set themselves up to make things easy for you. I give them my business because they have such a good service-oriented website: you tell them what computer they have and they'll list the RAM they have that they guarantee is compatible with it. At good prices.

Hard Drives can also be upgraded with little fuss, though it's a little trickier if you need to move data around when you do so.

It might be possible to upgrade the CPU and other features, but we're starting to get into territory where if you're comfortable doing it you probably don't need to hear this stuff from me. Also, raw CPU power matters, but not as much as most people think compared to things like RAM capacity and RAM and HD access speeds. So I wouldn't stress too much about it anyway.