A friendly reminder

You can always ask for help on any technical issue by emailing
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posted to the site as well, with your personal information omitted.

Howto...

Today we start something new for us, in what will be an ongoing series for this blog. How to Better Understand Geeks. For this initial post, I'm going to break down the basic parts of you PC and explain them in easy to digest analogies. Without further ado: How to Understand What Makes up Your Computer - Part 1.

Kilo-, Mega-, Giga-, Tera-, Peta-
If you see these prefixes before a word, it's basically just telling you how many there are. Kilo is 1,000, and in the order that the rest appear, they are 1,000 times more. So Mega is 1,000 Kilo, and Giga is 1,000 Mega and so on. We are just starting to see items with Terabyte hard drives(more on that later) hitting the market, so you may come across this term, but for the near future, you might not need to remember what the Peta- prefix means.

Megahertz VS. Megabytes(and Gigahertz VS. Gigabytes):
These two terms are often confused among the technologically uninitiated, and if you can't keep them straight, you will stick out like a sore thumb to a geek. Basically, hertz is a measurement of how many "cycles", or thought processes, a device can perform in 1 minute. More is definitely faster. A byte is a unit of data, or information, that the computer remembers. You'll see bytes(Megabytes or gigabytes, usually) describing 2 different aspects of a computer most frequently; RAM and hard drives.

RAM(Random Access Memory) and Hard Drives:
Simply put, this is your computer's short term, and long term memory. Another way of thinking about ram is comparing it to your desk at work. If you have a very small desk, it can be hard to keep organized and get anything done quickly, but with a larger desk, it's easier to keep your tasks organized and separated and you can get work done much quicker, regardless of how sharp you are. Hard drives are your storage for everything that you want, and your computer needs, to keep on hand. These are your filing cabinets, your bookshelves, your desk drawers, and anything else that you use to store your stuff, all combined. Both of these are measured in bytes, but just remember that RAM is like the random stuff you have to remember over the course of the day to get things done, and a hard drive is everything you need to remember for long periods of time.
What more RAM means to you: The more RAM you have, the more programs your computer can run at once. Not all programs are created equal, and some take more RAM than others to run smoothly. More RAM also means these needy applications will run smoother.
What a larger hard drive means to you: The more stuff you can save on your computer. If all you do is check email and browse the web, you don't need much. If you've got a family computer, your kids will use a lot more than you do. Having more storage space means the difference between having a few songs saved on your computer and having all of your music, pictures and videos saved onto your computer. If you're not that ambitious, or plan on keeping the computer all to yourself, you can probably get by just fine with a smaller drive.

The Processor(CPU):
This is easily the brain of your computer. Its speed is measured in Hertz(nowadays from 1.2 to 3.0 gigahertz is common), and number of cores. Not too much to be concerned about here, just that more of either >means faster, and less power usage on the electric bill.
What a faster processor means to you: less waiting. There are still other things than can slow you down on your computer, but a faster processor means that your computer will respond to your commands much quicker. And having multiple cores is just like adding another processor to your computer, it'll respond that much faster. Still with me? You're doing great. Don't forget, you can always bookmark this or print this off to read later.

Wireless(WiFi):
Don't let the name fool you, you will still have at least one wire running to your computer. This just means one less wire adding to the mess. This always comes with a letter describing what kind of WiFi it has(if any), and the later in the alphabet, the faster it can access information from elsewhere, and the further it can be from the access point(the source of the signal). It's basically a walkie-talkie just for computers to talk to each other in their own language. By the way, their alphabet skips several letters, so don't worry about the gaps, just remember later means farther and faster.
What the letters mean to you: "A" means the two computers(or a computer and a router) need to be right next to each other, and don't share very well. "B" is fine for across the same room if all you want to do is browse the web or check email. "G" is enough to cover a small house with good transfer speeds, and "N" means you can stream videos from your back porch to your laptop without many hiccups(see earlier posts if you aren't sure what that means).

Up to this point, you've been armed with enough knowledge to compare the hardware in prebuilt computers that you would find in any retail location, but that still isn't quite enough to help you make a decision if you aren't sure what you need when you are looking to buy.

What are your needs?
Let's start with what you *want* to do with the computer: If you want to go online, do your taxes, pay bills, check email and the news, and maybe watch some videos on YouTubeTM, chances are really good that you'd be happy with what's commonly called a netbook or a nettop. These tasks are not very demanding at all on a computer, and these computers are built with scaled-back components with that in mind. Don't confuse "scaled-back" with "lower-end"; these are new parts designed for low demand usage. They are state of the art, and best of all, inexpensive.

If you'd like to branch out a little bit and do a bit more demanding tasks such as editing pictures you've taken with your digital camera to get rid of red-eye or maybe just brighten it up a bit, record backups of your DVD's(legally, mind you), or record your music collection to your computer, you fall into the range of most computers out there for sale today. A faster processor, and more RAM will really help speed up these tasks, but if you plan on doing a lot of them, you'll need a spacious hard drive as well. How spacious really depends on a lot of things, but100 to 300 gigabytes will please most casual users.

What about games? The answer to this really depends on what you mean. If you play the game by going to a website, or simple puzzle or card games, your needs are met simply by having an internet connection and a computer. If the games involve 3D graphics and look like a real-breathing world inside your computer monitor, you will need a decent video card, and a computer fitting of one of the slightly more demanding users. Video Cards have specifications very similar to the computer itself. It has its own processor and memory, and the good news is, upgrading or installing a video card to your desktop computer is a fairly simple process these days, and can be done long after you've bought your computer. If you are thinking about buying a video card to play games, start by looking at the boxes for the games themselves. They always have a "minimum" and a "recommended" configuration for your computer and video card. Find the games you want to play, read the recommended specs, and find a card with at least those specs.

Now I'm going to make the very safe assumption that you don't need a top-of-the-line, bleeding-edge computer. There are a few people who could really put those to use: people who work with graphics at a professional level, and video game fanatics. Both of these groups have a pretty good idea what their needs are in a computer already.