Kathleen Guico jiggled her index finger over the red mouse nob at the center of the laptop computer, frowned and moved to another model, this one with a touchpad for controlling the cursor on the small screen.
Nineteen-year-old Guico, browsing last week at Computer City Chicago at Grand Avenue and Orleans Street, was participating in the now-established ritual of shopping for a computer for school.
It’s a task that’s become both simpler, thanks to the advent of sub-$1,000 computers with astonishing horsepower, and more complicated, because laptops have also become cheaper and more powerful.
Universities increasingly are building out networks that connect dorm rooms, libraries and classrooms to the Internet and to campus Web sites. This broadening web of connectivity makes portable computing increasingly attractive to students like Guico.
“I can take (a laptop) to the library and work on a paper. It’s a lot more convenient. I can just put it in my backpack,” she said.
But on the downside, “I run the risk of having it stolen, and I don’t want to lose it,” said Guico, a Good Counsel High School graduate who will attend Harvard University this fall.
For the budget-conscious college student, or for a high school student who may still do the bulk of his or her schoolwork at home, the answer may be a desktop computer.
To get you ready to hit the stores, here’s what you might expect in a name-brand computer, like IBM, Hewlett-Packard or Compaq, for $1,000 or less–and some things to watch out for:
The computer itself
– A 233-megahertz processor. Intel Corp.’s Pentium with MMX (a multimedia enhancement) dominates the market, but the more powerful Pentium II, and a new low-price chip from Intel, the Celeron, also turn up in this price range. In addition, reviews indicate that Advanced Micro Devices’s K6 processor offers parity at a somewhat lower price.
The megahertz rating is the speed at which a chip makes calculations internally. It’s a useful but incomplete measure of performance. A 133-mHz chip processes instructions internally twice as fast as a 66 mHz device, but that doesn’t make a computer twice as fast, because random access memory, software design and other variables also affect performance.
– A three- to four-gigabyte hard drive for data storage. A capacity of one gigabyte is the approximate equivalent of about one billion alphanumeric characters, or enough space to store more than 1,100 copies of a 150-page book.
– At least 32 megabytes of RAM, a computer’s short-term memory.
– A 24X CD-ROM. The higher the number in front of CD-ROM, the faster that data, such as software installations, can be transferred.
– A 56-kilobits-per-second modem for Internet connectivity. Modems already on the market are based on one of two competing technical standards, Kflex and x2, which have just been reconciled. Check to see which flavor your Internet service provider supports at the moment. And make sure that whatever you buy includes a free software upgrade to the new common standard, known as v.90.
Although the megahertz rating of a microprocessor is a popular way of gauging computing power, most people wouldn’t notice a performance difference between a 200 mHz computer and one with a 300 mHz chip for common uses like word processing, e-mail retrieval or Internet browsing.
“We tell students that if it’s a choice between a 200 mHz machine and a 300 mHz machine or (random access) memory, bump your memory up, from 16 to 24 or 32 MB of RAM,” said Walter Czerniak, director of computing and telecommunications at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb.
Although first-timers are often most comfortable with name-brand computers, you can do even better for the same money, especially on processor power and RAM, if you’re willing to scour the computer trade publications and buy a regional brand.
“If you’re a little bit more willing to look for non-national brands, you can pick up some extra megahertz for the same money,” said Henry Norr, a Berkeley-based computer writer and editor emeritus of MacWeek magazine.
But some basic knowledge of components is helpful in judging the quality of what you’re getting if you decide to go the non-name brand route.
Mail order is another good way to go. Three of the biggest postal vendors are Gateway 2000 Inc. of North Sioux City, S.D., Micron Electronics Corp. of Boise, Idaho, and Dell Computer Corp. of Round Rock, Texas. If you have access to a computer, you can shop from the companies’ Web sites: www.gateway.com, www.micronpc.com and www.dell.com; you also can call Gateway at 1-800-846-4208, Micron at 1-800-209-9686 and Dell at 1-800-BUY-DELL (289-3355).
Most computers come with a one- to three-year warranty. “The nice thing is even the cheapest PCs these days are pretty darn reliable,” said Bill Howard, senior executive editor at PC Magazine and author of a recent study on how well computer-makers stand behind what they sell.
But if you feel the need to buy more protection, extended warranty plans are available. Howard said that it costs a manufacturer $25 to $50 per year to warrant a computer, “so if you’re paying more than $100, you’re helping their profit margin more than you need to.”
Mac versus Windows
Apple Computer Inc., which dominated academic desktop computing for much of the 1980s, lost market share in part because it didn’t follow the lead of Windows-based machines and drop prices for its well-regarded Macintosh computers.
But earlier this year, Apple announced the stylishly-designed iMac, at $1,299 (not including a printer), a relatively low-cost entrant for the home and school markets.
The iMac, which is expected to be available on Aug. 15, features a 233 mHz processor, a four gigabyte hard drive and 32 MBs of RAM. Because of the architecture of Apple’s processors and other design wrinkles, the iMac outperforms similarly configured Windows machines. Unfortunately, the range of software available for the Mac platform is much narrower than what’s available for Windows units.
Besides the computer itself, the crucial add-ons are a monitor (except for the iMac) and a printer.
Monitors
A 15-inch monitor will do for most uses, although if you use a lot of graphics or the split-screen function, you may want to move up to a 17-inch, or even a 19-inch unit.
Bear in mind that the actual viewing area of the screen is smaller than the advertised size. Look for the viewable image size to find out the true size of what you’re looking at.
One useful metric for gauging viewing quality is dot pitch, which is the distance between the midpoints of the adjacent dots or pixels that make up an image. A dot pitch of .28 mm or less is acceptable, but smaller, like .25 mm, is better.
Expect to pay $200 to $350 for a 15-inch monitor, $350 to $700 for a 17-inch unit and $800 to $1,000 for a 19-incher. Be aware that the 19-inch model sucks up about one third more power than the 17-inch screen.
And be aware that monitor displays in stores are optimized to look good under store conditions. Get a 30-day money back guarantee so you can return it if it doesn’t meet your needs in a home or dorm setting.
Printers
Printers are the easiest part of the computing package to assemble. Prices have come way down while quality has improved.
A perfectly acceptable entry-level color printer can be had for under $200. Look for one that prints at 600 dots per inch (dpi).
Epson, for instance, makes a color ink-jet printer that costs $150, prints at 720 dpi and spits out four pages a minute in black and white and three pages a minute in color.
Laptops
If portability is an issue, then it’s time to look at laptops, which carry falling but still significantly higher price tags for delivering the same computing power as budget desktop PCs.
More than with full-sized PCs, the fit between a laptop and its owner needs to be tailored by a hands-on tryout. That’s because keyboards come in different sizes, all of them smaller than a conventional desktop version. Some cramp the fingers and others offer surprising room.
In addition, various manufacturers use different means–touchpad, trackball or mouse–to control the cursor on the screen.
Cramming the performance of a sub-$1,000 PC into a portable package roughly doubles the cost, according to Steven Winandy, manager of Computer Discount Warehouse on West Grand Avenue.
CDW’s most popular laptop is a Toshiba 233 mHz Pentium with a 4.1 gigabyte hard drive, 32 MBs of RAM and a 56 kbps modem. “That’s getting into the $2,000 range,” Winandy said.
“If they’re primarily going to be doing word processing, then a 166 mHz Pentium should be fine,” he said. Those laptops cost from $1,100 to $2,000 depending on screen size, amount of RAM, size of hard drive and the overall size and weight of the computer.
Laptop screens come in two technology flavors: passive matrix LCD is a little cheaper and consumes slightly less power, but active matrix makes for a sharper display.
While designers have made great strides in improving the laptop typing and viewing experience, this is not the choice for you if playing games is a major consideration.
Networking
Much of the networking on college campuses uses a high-speed method called Ethernet, and a computer needs to have an adaptor card to take advantage of it. Locally, for example, the University of Chicago and DePaul and Northwestern universities all have wired dorm rooms and other study areas with Ethernet.
An Ethernet card costs $20 to $90 for a desktop PC and $100 to $150 for a laptop.
If you’re not sure about special connection requirements, call the school’s computing services department.
Homework assignment
It helps to do some research before heading to a store, the Web or the phone to place an order. The knowledge level of people who sell computers varies enormously, so a little independently acquired info can go a long way to bolstering your confidence.
A couple of decent on-line sources of product information are:
hwreviews.netscape.com/computing/hwreviews/
www.zdnet.com/pcmag/pclabs/pcs/index.html (The same material is in the Sept. 1 print edition of PC Magazine.)
The latter Web site contains reviews as well as an evaluation of how well computer-makers perform consumer hand-holding and troubleshooting after they make a sale.
A word of caution: Intel announced computer chip price cuts last week and AMD followed suit. These announcements probably will lead to a bit of price-cutting over the next month or so. While you might want to wait a couple of weeks to see if this or any subsequent drop in component costs brings prices down significantly, don’t expect a bottoming out anytime soon. If you do, you may never pull the trigger on a purchase.
It’s the nature of computers in the early morning of the Information Age that they get cheaper almost by the week. When you buy yours, just tell yourself, “I got a good deal.” You probably did.
