Administrator
November 12, 2000, 07:26 pm
xe11
Member
posts: 37
(11/10/00 7:37:48 pm)
pc rumors exposed - Hardware
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Computers have been cloaked in mystery since their earliest days when techie insiders were the only people who understood PC technology and really didn’t want the exclusive club of knowledgeable users to get much larger. In the last 20 years, software and hardware makers have tried to make the whole computing experience more transparent for average users with clearer error messages, more intuitive software interfaces, and even revolutionary concepts such as labeling the cords that come in PC boxes.
But any device that requires its users to understand things like DLLs (dynamic-link libraries) and buffer overruns is sure to lead to misinformation and rumors about better strategies. This month’s feature package addresses the most persistent, popular, and even dangerous computing myths and provides the hard facts that help you really get to the bottom of what’s going on with your PC and work more efficiently. Don’t fall for the whispered tales about how to maintain your hard drive or how you shouldn’t worry about certain viruses until you read the following pages on the most common hardware, software, Internet, and shopping myths.
Hardware
Rumor: You should leave your PC and monitor on at all times.
Imagine the following scenario: Upon leaving the office, Joe gets into his car, which has been idling since he arrived in the morning, and heads home. Once there, Joe enters his empty and well-lit house—the lights are on, of course—to the familiar sound of the television. He slides a frozen pizza into the hot oven, which he always keeps set at a blazing 425 degrees, and as he steps into a shower that’s been running all day, Joe smiles and thinks to himself, “I’m a smart guy. Nothing I own will ever wear out because I leave it running all the time.”
Such reasoning is ridiculous, but thousands of computer users follow the same logic when they choose to leave their PCs powered on at all times. The fact is that every component in your system consumes electricity. An average computer monitor, for instance, consumes an average of 130 watts per hour. If that monitor runs 10 hours a day for 250 days of the year, it will eat up 325 kilowatts annually. Leave that same monitor running around the clock, however, and it will consume 1,139 kilowatts per year. At a cost of approximately 7 cents per kilowatt, that adds up to an extra $57 per year on your electric bill.
If you’re concerned that turning an electrical device on and off reduces its lifespan, don’t be. Take the hard drive as an example. People often claim that the startup process damages hard drives. That’s not true, says Richard Van Dyke, senior manager of product marketing engineering for Maxtor. “Before you have started your hard drive for the first time, samples of that drive have already gone through thousands of start/stop cycle testing—approximately 50,000 minimum for most hard drive companies,” Van Dyke says. “The results of these tests conclude there is no risk to shutting down your PC every night before going home.”
Here’s the bottom line: Leaving your system turned on at all times won’t extend the life of the equipment. It just wastes electricity.
Rumor : Building your own PC is cheap & easy.
Don’t believe it. Putting a system together on your own requires a thorough understanding of the relationships that exist among the various hardware components. That means you know how the parts fit together within the computer case. It also means you have the ability to select components that are compatible with the rest of the system. For example, motherboards come with CPU slot specifications, such as Socket 7, Slot 1, and Socket 370. If you don’t know what those are, you’ll have a hard time finding a processor that works with the motherboard.
Moreover, building your own PC takes great technical dexterity. It requires working in tight spaces with tiny screws and even tinier jumpers (small metal or plastic boxes that are placed on pins on a hardware component to determine the component’s configuration). It also demands confidence in your own skills, a confidence that intuitively tells you whether you should keep pushing two components together or stop before one of them breaks.
Finally, constructing a system probably costs more than you think. As a lone user, you can’t get the hefty bulk discounts that hardware manufacturers and OEMs (original equipment manufacturers; companies that build computer systems) enjoy. You’ll pay several hundred dollars each for a hard drive, disc drive, memory, processor, monitor, and an operating system. Then you must buy the keyboard, mouse, motherboard, diskette drive, modem, computer case, and all the other incidentals that add to the cost of a system. Indeed, to build a decent—but definitely not cutting-edge—PC, you should plan on spending at least $3,000. You could get the same thing from a reputable brand for at least $1,000 less.
Building a PC has benefits, of course, the most important being that you get exactly what you want. But some OEMs, Gateway (www.gateway.com) and Dell (www.dell.com) being two well-known examples, let you order highly customized PCs. Just tell the customer service rep which parts you want. A few weeks later, you’ll have the PC of your dreams. Better yet, you won’t have worked too hard or spent too much getting it.
Rumor: Overclocking is a great way to get a few extra MHz from your processor.
To the uninitiated, overclocking sounds like a great plan. You get extra megahertz without spending a dime. But anyone who rushes into overclocking is likely to get no more from it than a malfunctioning PC.
Overclocking is the act of manipulating a processor to run faster than its advertised speed. Resetting the jumpers on an Athlon 700MHz processor so that it runs at 800MHz is one example. This works because processor manufacturers tend to underrate the chips when labeling their speeds. Technically, there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with overclocking. Computer hobbyists have been doing it for years. However, overclocking your CPU (central processing unit) puts your system at risk for a whole slew of technical problems and nullifies any warranty you may have on your processor. In other words, for the sake of a few extra megahertz, you could end up with a CPU that doesn’t work and no way of getting it fixed.
There’s also an uglier side of overclocking, says George Alfs, Intel spokesperson. “What we’re really worried about with overclocking is unsavory types overclocking the processors and reselling them as higher-rated CPUs to other purchasers,” he says. “That’s illegal. We really don’t like that, and neither do most people.”
To ensure you get a system that hasn’t been overclocked, Alfs recommends buying hardware components only from authorized dealers. Owners of Intel processors also can refer to the Intel Processor Frequency ID Utility (support.intel.com/support...equencyid) to determine whether their processors are running faster than their rated speeds. If you determine that your CPU has been overclocked without your knowledge, you should contact the manufacturer and the retailer who sold it to you.
Rumor: Windows runs worse after a certain amount of RAM is installed.
This is one of the few hardware rumors of which we know the origin. Back in 1995, around the time Microsoft released Windows 95, Intel came out with a pair of chipsets (a group of silicon chips that are located on the motherboard and perform various tasks within a PC) called the 430TX and the 430VX. These chipsets were quality products that supported the Pentium processor, but they had a few limitations. One limitation was that the L2 cache (Level 2 cache; an area of memory, distinct from system memory, that exists outside the processor and handles frequently used data) associated with them recognized only the first 64MB (megabytes) of system memory.
Some users heard this fact and erroneously concluded that Windows ran worse with more memory. This conclusion was untrue. Although the L2 cache on these systems was limited by the 64MB barrier, the rest of the system was not. These systems could contain and use as much memory as the operating system supported (Windows 9x, for instance, supports 2GB [gigabytes] of RAM [random-access memory]). Granted, there might have been a noticeable performance drop when comparing the time it took the L2 cache to retrieve data from the first 64MB and the time it took the processor to retrieve data from the area of memory beyond 64MB. But either access speed was faster than the alternative, which is retrieving data from virtual memory (on a hard drive, an area reserved for the temporary storage of data that doesn’t fit in system memory). Your system relies on virtual memory when it runs out of memory. It takes longer for the processor to access virtual memory on the hard drive than to access the memory on the motherboard. Although your system will always use some virtual memory, you can minimize its dependence on virtual memory by increasing system memory. Today’s systems aren’t limited by the 64MB barrier. Even if they were, your best bet is to install as much memory as your applications need. For most users, that amount will be somewhere between 32MB and 128MB.
Rumor: A virus can destroy your hard drive.
You know that viruses can delete and corrupt files stored on your hard drive and even modify the drive’s organizational structure, thereby disrupting access to your data. But can viruses physically damage the hard drive?
It’s very unlikely, says Laura Garcia-Manrique, product manager of Symantec’s Norton AntiVirus utility. In fact, she says, such a situation has never actually occurred. “If a virus caused a hard drive to write to a particular sector many times, it could theoretically wear out the sector,” she says. “But that limit is so high, it most likely never would happen. In reality, hard drives are designed to support tens of millions if not billions of writes before any damage occurs.”
The important thing to remember is that viruses infect data not hardware. Even in serious cases, where a virus has attacked the hard drive’s organizational structure or modified basic operating system settings so that you can’t access your data or boot up (start) the operating system, the damage is certainly limited to the software. All you have to do, Garcia-Manrique says, is contact an antivirus software developer and get an appropriate solution.
Rumor: You should run disk maintenance utilities such as Disk Defragmenter once a week.
While you should be in the habit of running Scandisk and Disk Defragmenter regularly, you don’t necessarily need to do it on a weekly schedule. To illustrate this point, think of your PC as a car. If you drive in a city, starting and stopping often, you must be aggressive about car maintenance, changing the oil and filter every 2,500 miles, for instance. But if you drive primarily on the highway, with lots of long stretches of continuous driving at 55mph, then you can safely change the oil every 3,500 or 4,000 miles.
Your computer must be maintained the same way. If you put your PC through a workout every time you use it—you frequently install and uninstall applications, for instance, or download lots of files from the Internet— you should keep a rigorous disk maintenance schedule. But if you only use your PC for low-impact activities, such as checking e-mail messages and balancing a checkbook, then you can extend the time between maintenance checks. In such a case, you would be safe running Scandisk once a month and Disk Defragmenter twice a year.
Rumor: One megabyte equals 1,048,576 bytes.
Technically, this rumor is accurate—except when measuring the capacity of hard drives. The hard drive industry has adopted a unique measuring system that equates one megabyte to 1 million bytes rather than the accurate figure of 1,048,576 bytes.
“Although these two numbers differ in value, they mean basically the same thing,” says Maxtor’s Van Dyke. “A non-hard drive example might help to explain: The freezing point is measured as 32 degrees Fahrenheit or 0 degrees Celsius. This is exactly the same temperature, just measured in different units. The Megabyte vs. Millionbyte translation is two ways to look at the same capacity.”
This difference, which drive makers don’t publicize, explains why the actual storage capacity of a hard drive seems like less than its advertised capacity. To determine your drive’s actual storage capacity, you must perform three calculations. First, divide the storage amount advertised in gigabytes by 1.024. Then divide that number by 1.024. Then divide that number by 1.024 again. The resulting amount is the actual storage capacity in gigabytes.
Rumor: You can never have enough storage space or memory.
This is one of those hyperbolic statements that gets bandied around by some salespeople and others who want to sound like they know a lot about technology. In reality, it’s kind of like saying you can never have enough money. Sure, we’d all like to have $1 billion, but what would you do with it?
A PC eventually reaches a point where it makes no sense to add memory or storage space. For most users, those points are approximately 128MB of system memory and 20GB of hard drive space. PCs with this much memory and storage space can support any application or data set currently available to the general public. Plus, you won’t have to spend a fortune on equipment. You can get 128MB of memory and a 20GB hard drive for less than $500.
Of course, some users need more than this. You should double or quadruple our recommended amounts if you do lots of graphics work or play lots of games on your PC.
Rumor: You can leave a disk in the storage drive all the time.
Although you can safely keep an optical disc, such as a CD-ROM or DVD (digital versatile disc), in an optical disc drive at all times, you shouldn’t do the same with other storage media.
“It is not a good idea to store a diskette in your floppy drive. The diskette’s shutter is open while inside of the drive, potentially exposing the magnetic film to dust and even electromagnetic interference, which can damage the data stored on the disk.”
The same is true of LS-120 disks, Zip disks, and any other storage medium that has a shutter on it. For best results, store your magnetic disks in plastic cases when they’re not in use.
reddsteel
Moderator
posts: 1223
(11/11/00 7:50:37 am)
Re: pc rumors exposed - Hardware
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Some more good information. Thanks xe11! =)
-- reddsteel
helping napster users connect - naptalk
# 1 Tech Supported ezBoard - Tech Guy's BB
Jaturp
Member
posts: 340
(11/11/00 8:41:57 am)
Re: pc rumors exposed - Hardware
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I`ve got to disagree with building a new pc price. A machine I can build for $1200 will cost you $2500 from Gateway. There are some cheap prices from Dell but found if I built a similar one the parts they use would not be my choice. Part of the diff in price will reflect warranty and support. But some people need these things and will pay for it before paying for superior hardware. Buy a clone..Keep Mom and Pop in business and get more bang for your buck.JT.
If it ain`t broke.......I ain`t interested
reddsteel
Moderator
posts: 1224
(11/11/00 9:13:42 am)
Re: pc rumors exposed - Hardware
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The only problem with the $1200 build your own is what you said >> Support. If you break you have to fix it or get someone else to. The prices of new parts and fixing costs might get you in the end if you dont know what you are doing. Bottom Line >>> If you arent sure of what you are doing dont attempt to build your own.
-- reddsteel
helping napster users connect - naptalk
# 1 Tech Supported ezBoard - Tech Guy's BB
Jaturp
Member
posts: 341
(11/11/00 12:41:40 pm)
Re: pc rumors exposed - Hardware
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What happened to self support? Most people don`t have to know what they are doing but they must want to learn. It isn`t brain surgery,nobody dies. There is nothing diff btwn a tech, auto mechanic or baker. All of these people started knowing nothing. Apply yourself and you can build your own and support yourself too. This is in reach of everyone that thinks it is important enough to do. Friends Help.JT.
If it ain`t broke.......I ain`t interested
reddsteel
Moderator
posts: 1228
(11/11/00 12:43:01 pm)
Re: pc rumors exposed - Hardware
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You can find tons of guides and tutorials on the internet for building your own comp. They are very indepth. =)
-- reddsteel
helping napster users connect - naptalk
# 1 Tech Supported ezBoard - Tech Guy's BB
Member
posts: 37
(11/10/00 7:37:48 pm)
pc rumors exposed - Hardware
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Computers have been cloaked in mystery since their earliest days when techie insiders were the only people who understood PC technology and really didn’t want the exclusive club of knowledgeable users to get much larger. In the last 20 years, software and hardware makers have tried to make the whole computing experience more transparent for average users with clearer error messages, more intuitive software interfaces, and even revolutionary concepts such as labeling the cords that come in PC boxes.
But any device that requires its users to understand things like DLLs (dynamic-link libraries) and buffer overruns is sure to lead to misinformation and rumors about better strategies. This month’s feature package addresses the most persistent, popular, and even dangerous computing myths and provides the hard facts that help you really get to the bottom of what’s going on with your PC and work more efficiently. Don’t fall for the whispered tales about how to maintain your hard drive or how you shouldn’t worry about certain viruses until you read the following pages on the most common hardware, software, Internet, and shopping myths.
Hardware
Rumor: You should leave your PC and monitor on at all times.
Imagine the following scenario: Upon leaving the office, Joe gets into his car, which has been idling since he arrived in the morning, and heads home. Once there, Joe enters his empty and well-lit house—the lights are on, of course—to the familiar sound of the television. He slides a frozen pizza into the hot oven, which he always keeps set at a blazing 425 degrees, and as he steps into a shower that’s been running all day, Joe smiles and thinks to himself, “I’m a smart guy. Nothing I own will ever wear out because I leave it running all the time.”
Such reasoning is ridiculous, but thousands of computer users follow the same logic when they choose to leave their PCs powered on at all times. The fact is that every component in your system consumes electricity. An average computer monitor, for instance, consumes an average of 130 watts per hour. If that monitor runs 10 hours a day for 250 days of the year, it will eat up 325 kilowatts annually. Leave that same monitor running around the clock, however, and it will consume 1,139 kilowatts per year. At a cost of approximately 7 cents per kilowatt, that adds up to an extra $57 per year on your electric bill.
If you’re concerned that turning an electrical device on and off reduces its lifespan, don’t be. Take the hard drive as an example. People often claim that the startup process damages hard drives. That’s not true, says Richard Van Dyke, senior manager of product marketing engineering for Maxtor. “Before you have started your hard drive for the first time, samples of that drive have already gone through thousands of start/stop cycle testing—approximately 50,000 minimum for most hard drive companies,” Van Dyke says. “The results of these tests conclude there is no risk to shutting down your PC every night before going home.”
Here’s the bottom line: Leaving your system turned on at all times won’t extend the life of the equipment. It just wastes electricity.
Rumor : Building your own PC is cheap & easy.
Don’t believe it. Putting a system together on your own requires a thorough understanding of the relationships that exist among the various hardware components. That means you know how the parts fit together within the computer case. It also means you have the ability to select components that are compatible with the rest of the system. For example, motherboards come with CPU slot specifications, such as Socket 7, Slot 1, and Socket 370. If you don’t know what those are, you’ll have a hard time finding a processor that works with the motherboard.
Moreover, building your own PC takes great technical dexterity. It requires working in tight spaces with tiny screws and even tinier jumpers (small metal or plastic boxes that are placed on pins on a hardware component to determine the component’s configuration). It also demands confidence in your own skills, a confidence that intuitively tells you whether you should keep pushing two components together or stop before one of them breaks.
Finally, constructing a system probably costs more than you think. As a lone user, you can’t get the hefty bulk discounts that hardware manufacturers and OEMs (original equipment manufacturers; companies that build computer systems) enjoy. You’ll pay several hundred dollars each for a hard drive, disc drive, memory, processor, monitor, and an operating system. Then you must buy the keyboard, mouse, motherboard, diskette drive, modem, computer case, and all the other incidentals that add to the cost of a system. Indeed, to build a decent—but definitely not cutting-edge—PC, you should plan on spending at least $3,000. You could get the same thing from a reputable brand for at least $1,000 less.
Building a PC has benefits, of course, the most important being that you get exactly what you want. But some OEMs, Gateway (www.gateway.com) and Dell (www.dell.com) being two well-known examples, let you order highly customized PCs. Just tell the customer service rep which parts you want. A few weeks later, you’ll have the PC of your dreams. Better yet, you won’t have worked too hard or spent too much getting it.
Rumor: Overclocking is a great way to get a few extra MHz from your processor.
To the uninitiated, overclocking sounds like a great plan. You get extra megahertz without spending a dime. But anyone who rushes into overclocking is likely to get no more from it than a malfunctioning PC.
Overclocking is the act of manipulating a processor to run faster than its advertised speed. Resetting the jumpers on an Athlon 700MHz processor so that it runs at 800MHz is one example. This works because processor manufacturers tend to underrate the chips when labeling their speeds. Technically, there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with overclocking. Computer hobbyists have been doing it for years. However, overclocking your CPU (central processing unit) puts your system at risk for a whole slew of technical problems and nullifies any warranty you may have on your processor. In other words, for the sake of a few extra megahertz, you could end up with a CPU that doesn’t work and no way of getting it fixed.
There’s also an uglier side of overclocking, says George Alfs, Intel spokesperson. “What we’re really worried about with overclocking is unsavory types overclocking the processors and reselling them as higher-rated CPUs to other purchasers,” he says. “That’s illegal. We really don’t like that, and neither do most people.”
To ensure you get a system that hasn’t been overclocked, Alfs recommends buying hardware components only from authorized dealers. Owners of Intel processors also can refer to the Intel Processor Frequency ID Utility (support.intel.com/support...equencyid) to determine whether their processors are running faster than their rated speeds. If you determine that your CPU has been overclocked without your knowledge, you should contact the manufacturer and the retailer who sold it to you.
Rumor: Windows runs worse after a certain amount of RAM is installed.
This is one of the few hardware rumors of which we know the origin. Back in 1995, around the time Microsoft released Windows 95, Intel came out with a pair of chipsets (a group of silicon chips that are located on the motherboard and perform various tasks within a PC) called the 430TX and the 430VX. These chipsets were quality products that supported the Pentium processor, but they had a few limitations. One limitation was that the L2 cache (Level 2 cache; an area of memory, distinct from system memory, that exists outside the processor and handles frequently used data) associated with them recognized only the first 64MB (megabytes) of system memory.
Some users heard this fact and erroneously concluded that Windows ran worse with more memory. This conclusion was untrue. Although the L2 cache on these systems was limited by the 64MB barrier, the rest of the system was not. These systems could contain and use as much memory as the operating system supported (Windows 9x, for instance, supports 2GB [gigabytes] of RAM [random-access memory]). Granted, there might have been a noticeable performance drop when comparing the time it took the L2 cache to retrieve data from the first 64MB and the time it took the processor to retrieve data from the area of memory beyond 64MB. But either access speed was faster than the alternative, which is retrieving data from virtual memory (on a hard drive, an area reserved for the temporary storage of data that doesn’t fit in system memory). Your system relies on virtual memory when it runs out of memory. It takes longer for the processor to access virtual memory on the hard drive than to access the memory on the motherboard. Although your system will always use some virtual memory, you can minimize its dependence on virtual memory by increasing system memory. Today’s systems aren’t limited by the 64MB barrier. Even if they were, your best bet is to install as much memory as your applications need. For most users, that amount will be somewhere between 32MB and 128MB.
Rumor: A virus can destroy your hard drive.
You know that viruses can delete and corrupt files stored on your hard drive and even modify the drive’s organizational structure, thereby disrupting access to your data. But can viruses physically damage the hard drive?
It’s very unlikely, says Laura Garcia-Manrique, product manager of Symantec’s Norton AntiVirus utility. In fact, she says, such a situation has never actually occurred. “If a virus caused a hard drive to write to a particular sector many times, it could theoretically wear out the sector,” she says. “But that limit is so high, it most likely never would happen. In reality, hard drives are designed to support tens of millions if not billions of writes before any damage occurs.”
The important thing to remember is that viruses infect data not hardware. Even in serious cases, where a virus has attacked the hard drive’s organizational structure or modified basic operating system settings so that you can’t access your data or boot up (start) the operating system, the damage is certainly limited to the software. All you have to do, Garcia-Manrique says, is contact an antivirus software developer and get an appropriate solution.
Rumor: You should run disk maintenance utilities such as Disk Defragmenter once a week.
While you should be in the habit of running Scandisk and Disk Defragmenter regularly, you don’t necessarily need to do it on a weekly schedule. To illustrate this point, think of your PC as a car. If you drive in a city, starting and stopping often, you must be aggressive about car maintenance, changing the oil and filter every 2,500 miles, for instance. But if you drive primarily on the highway, with lots of long stretches of continuous driving at 55mph, then you can safely change the oil every 3,500 or 4,000 miles.
Your computer must be maintained the same way. If you put your PC through a workout every time you use it—you frequently install and uninstall applications, for instance, or download lots of files from the Internet— you should keep a rigorous disk maintenance schedule. But if you only use your PC for low-impact activities, such as checking e-mail messages and balancing a checkbook, then you can extend the time between maintenance checks. In such a case, you would be safe running Scandisk once a month and Disk Defragmenter twice a year.
Rumor: One megabyte equals 1,048,576 bytes.
Technically, this rumor is accurate—except when measuring the capacity of hard drives. The hard drive industry has adopted a unique measuring system that equates one megabyte to 1 million bytes rather than the accurate figure of 1,048,576 bytes.
“Although these two numbers differ in value, they mean basically the same thing,” says Maxtor’s Van Dyke. “A non-hard drive example might help to explain: The freezing point is measured as 32 degrees Fahrenheit or 0 degrees Celsius. This is exactly the same temperature, just measured in different units. The Megabyte vs. Millionbyte translation is two ways to look at the same capacity.”
This difference, which drive makers don’t publicize, explains why the actual storage capacity of a hard drive seems like less than its advertised capacity. To determine your drive’s actual storage capacity, you must perform three calculations. First, divide the storage amount advertised in gigabytes by 1.024. Then divide that number by 1.024. Then divide that number by 1.024 again. The resulting amount is the actual storage capacity in gigabytes.
Rumor: You can never have enough storage space or memory.
This is one of those hyperbolic statements that gets bandied around by some salespeople and others who want to sound like they know a lot about technology. In reality, it’s kind of like saying you can never have enough money. Sure, we’d all like to have $1 billion, but what would you do with it?
A PC eventually reaches a point where it makes no sense to add memory or storage space. For most users, those points are approximately 128MB of system memory and 20GB of hard drive space. PCs with this much memory and storage space can support any application or data set currently available to the general public. Plus, you won’t have to spend a fortune on equipment. You can get 128MB of memory and a 20GB hard drive for less than $500.
Of course, some users need more than this. You should double or quadruple our recommended amounts if you do lots of graphics work or play lots of games on your PC.
Rumor: You can leave a disk in the storage drive all the time.
Although you can safely keep an optical disc, such as a CD-ROM or DVD (digital versatile disc), in an optical disc drive at all times, you shouldn’t do the same with other storage media.
“It is not a good idea to store a diskette in your floppy drive. The diskette’s shutter is open while inside of the drive, potentially exposing the magnetic film to dust and even electromagnetic interference, which can damage the data stored on the disk.”
The same is true of LS-120 disks, Zip disks, and any other storage medium that has a shutter on it. For best results, store your magnetic disks in plastic cases when they’re not in use.
reddsteel
Moderator
posts: 1223
(11/11/00 7:50:37 am)
Re: pc rumors exposed - Hardware
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Some more good information. Thanks xe11! =)
-- reddsteel
helping napster users connect - naptalk
# 1 Tech Supported ezBoard - Tech Guy's BB
Jaturp
Member
posts: 340
(11/11/00 8:41:57 am)
Re: pc rumors exposed - Hardware
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I`ve got to disagree with building a new pc price. A machine I can build for $1200 will cost you $2500 from Gateway. There are some cheap prices from Dell but found if I built a similar one the parts they use would not be my choice. Part of the diff in price will reflect warranty and support. But some people need these things and will pay for it before paying for superior hardware. Buy a clone..Keep Mom and Pop in business and get more bang for your buck.JT.
If it ain`t broke.......I ain`t interested
reddsteel
Moderator
posts: 1224
(11/11/00 9:13:42 am)
Re: pc rumors exposed - Hardware
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The only problem with the $1200 build your own is what you said >> Support. If you break you have to fix it or get someone else to. The prices of new parts and fixing costs might get you in the end if you dont know what you are doing. Bottom Line >>> If you arent sure of what you are doing dont attempt to build your own.
-- reddsteel
helping napster users connect - naptalk
# 1 Tech Supported ezBoard - Tech Guy's BB
Jaturp
Member
posts: 341
(11/11/00 12:41:40 pm)
Re: pc rumors exposed - Hardware
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What happened to self support? Most people don`t have to know what they are doing but they must want to learn. It isn`t brain surgery,nobody dies. There is nothing diff btwn a tech, auto mechanic or baker. All of these people started knowing nothing. Apply yourself and you can build your own and support yourself too. This is in reach of everyone that thinks it is important enough to do. Friends Help.JT.
If it ain`t broke.......I ain`t interested
reddsteel
Moderator
posts: 1228
(11/11/00 12:43:01 pm)
Re: pc rumors exposed - Hardware
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You can find tons of guides and tutorials on the internet for building your own comp. They are very indepth. =)
-- reddsteel
helping napster users connect - naptalk
# 1 Tech Supported ezBoard - Tech Guy's BB