Thread: Few Tips to Follow While Buying your Desktop

Desktop Computers or Personal Computers are mainly used for home or office use. People are more dependent on personal computers today. This computers can serve various purposes such as playing computer games, document processing, surfing the internet and sending e-mails. There are various parts in a desktop computer, for example, a CPU, keyboard, mouse, monitor etc. There are a few things you need to follow while buying a desktop.
Computers are used for different things, so first you need to decide on the use of your desktop. There are people who buy computers for internet browsing that does not need good configuration. However, computers intended for graphics designing or video editing need to be a computer with greater storage and decent speed. The higher the configuration you need, the higher your budget should be. This is the first goal you need to set while buying a desktop.
The second point to note while buying a desktop is the power consumption. Few models of desktop consume more power than the others. So, you should choose the one with lesser power consumption. Before deciding on a certain desktop read reviews on it to get information on the power consumption. In this way you can decide the best one for you. Warranty is another important factor. Always check for the warranty period before buying. In case of a new company try finding one with more warranty period otherwise the usual warranty period is sufficient for the branded ones.
While buying a desktop the most important thing to note is the configuration of the desktop. If you are going for a laptop buy the one that is suitable for you. Following these few tips and tricks you can easily manage a sizeable desktop for you. The world desktop market is currently ruled by the HP brand. However, there are many renowned and reputed brands like Lenovo, Dell, Acer etc. Most of the desktops of these brands range between $400 to $600 which is a pretty much affordable rate. You should choose the one based on requirements and budget.

I graduated from a HCL PIII to an assembled AMD64 3200+ (single core) desktop with DDR 1GB RAM and an MSI motherboard with Hyundai 80GB HDD about 4 years back to work from home doing medical transcription. Now in addition to medical transcription I am learning on my own the features of desk top publishing as a hobby to make collages of family photos and simple cards, etc. using Serif SE and Illustrator. Also learning advanced features of MS Office for the purpose. I believe that in place of an integrated video and graphic card for the purpose of DTP one should use separate/additional video and graphic cards. I do not play games but write a lot at forums and at my website where I instead of writing in plain word, I would like to be more creative with displays, etc. I spend about 12-14 hours on my PC that other than earning my daily bread includes reading news, reading and posting at forums on a variety of interests, etc.

What kind of PC configuration I should look for doing the above including latest fastest RAMs? I am not too fond of Intel processors as I hate their Death Signs in blue that I used to face on my HCL PIII with frequent crashes. I am also not a fan of Internet Explorer. I prefer my present FF3.6. However, Intel motherboards is another thing. I am fond of AMD processors. I would like dual booting - both via Windows XP2 for transcription and Windows 7/MAC for DTP. I am not much in favor of large capacity hard disks as their daily maintenance of via CCleaner and Defragler will be very time consuming. In India in most computer shops they still have 7200 rpm Hard Disks.

I would also be moving from my present high heat generating and power consuming Samsung's Samtron SE 15" color monitor that has served me well for 12 years to an LED (say) 18-19 inches square monitor though all that I see are rectangular ones.

I would very much appreciate advise from learned members here.

In addition I thank rajan1311 for his post "Budget Gaming PC - Feb 2010" dated Feb 9, 2010. Currently we are in the days of DDR 4 RAMs the graphic cards must have updated. 500GB Seagate 7200 rpm costs around 2.1k. These are the times of LED monitors that cost about 7k. But yet a fantastic configuration post that I found subsequently. I have retained it for reference.