Why You Should Not Scrimp on a New PC

If you’ve bought a cheap computer before it’s quite likely that after a short while of using it, you noticed the speed at which it could perform tasks seemed to rapidly decrease. As soon as you got your favourite programs on it such as Itunes, Windows Messenger or Photoshop you began to notice that you’d be spending more and more time waiting for programs to open or perform simple tasks. And god forbid you have one of the latest versions of Norton Internet Security or a similar antivirus program. Then your PC would slow down to a fraction of the speed it appeared to work when you first set it up.

This scenario is all too common. Retailers offer these beautiful looking PC’s, packed with technical jargon, plus tons of free software you don’t want, don’t need and won’t use. They offer them with the latest operating system such as Windows Vista or Windows 7 and they also throw in a flat screen monitor all for not more than a few hundred pounds. Sounds great right?

The problem is if you buy a cheap machine like this you will end up with the above scenario. You may think “This machine has got 4gb of RAM, it must be good” But the problem is unless you really know your stuff about PC’s you will be fooled. RAM for instance is important and generally the rule of thumb is the more the better. But what a lot of people don’t realize is RAM runs at different speeds depending on the quality of it and the quality of the components around it. If you had say 4gb of cheap DDR400 RAM and 2gb of DDR2 800 RAM you’d be far better off with the second option. What a lot of people don’t realize is the retailers know how you think and know which buttons to press in order to get their sale. If you saw a PC advertised as Duo Core, 4 gig of RAM, 500gb hard drive, DVD-RW and some fandango graphics card you’d likely be blown away. The problem is these components in the cheaper options are likely cheap unbranded ones. The Duo Core processor is probably a very low spec, low speed one, the RAM is most likely a cheap low speed RAM, the hard drive is of the older IDE variety and the graphics card is just about good enough to play space invaders. Sad as it may be many manufacturers now spend more on the case than they do on the components within it. If it looks the part people will buy it. There’s nothing wrong with having a nice case but would you have the chassis of a Ferrari with the engine of a mini?

Generally more and more people are getting into a force economy. Buy a cheap PC. When it goes wrong just out of warranty or has ground to a complete halt a few weeks after buying it, just buy a new one and give the other one to the kids. This is just money down the drain.

You should reckon on spending around £450/500 on the PC alone (forget the monitor) to have a quality piece of equipment that will last and be a joy to use. These middle of the range PC’s are far more likely to be upgradeable to prolong their useful life in the future and the components are more likely to be a named brand with decent speed ratings.

If you use the PC for work then you will be far more productive with a decent spec one. Even if it’s just for home use, who wants to be sitting around for ages waiting for the PC to react to something or run a virus scan.

The long and short of it is you get what you pay for but paying too little can be a complete waste of your hard earned cash.