Good advice before buying a computer
They are very light brown or black or silver or sometimes other colours. Some have flashing lights and transparent panels so you can see inside them, even if you keep them where you cannot look inside.
They are the home computers (or PCs meaning Personal Computer) that a majority of homes in the western world have.
Yet, even though they are so common they are also a source of heartache to many owners. Unlike a television or other gadget that performs a simple and dedicated task, the PC is used for anything from writing letters to books, making simple calculations to solving complex equations, from playing simple basic games to becoming a simulator to train you as an airline pilot, to being able to remember last weeks shopping list to storing the latest edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica, to being able to use the internet to get a good deal for a holiday in Margate to find profound information on any subject known to man.
This might sound too good to be true but it is actually rather an understatement of what the most basic new PCs can do, and many older ones too.
The problem with a machine that can do so much is that it has to be told exactly what it has to do.
If you buy a DVD player you know that you are getting a machine that plays DVDs. If you buy a video recorder and player you know you are getting a machine that will do just the things you bought it for.
When you buy a PC you get a machine that has to be told, or programmed, to do the things you want it to do. To make life a bit more complicated it even has to be told in the first place what to do with the things you tell it to do after you have brought it.
You do not normally think about this. You buy a PC from the shops or a private PC builder or a friend or from an ad in a shop window. You switch it on and after about two minutes the monitor displays a pleasant picture and icons and menus on the screen provide seemingly magical access to programs you want to use. If you want to add some programs you may buy a CD containing the appropriate program that you insert into the PCs CD or DVD drive and with amazing ease the program is installed after following a series of simple instructions displayed on the monitor.
Without you realising it your new PC has had a number of programs installed before you bought it, in order to make all the other programs that you may buy, work. These programs are called the operating system and 95% of all PCs have an operating system designed by the American company Microsoft Corporation. This collection of programs is called Windows. Windows operating systems have been developed over a number of years and for home PCs they have included Windows 3.0, Windows 3.1, Windows 3.11, Windows95, Windows98, WindowsMe, Windows2000 and WindowsXP. Windows95 and Windows98 have different versions too. There are other Windows operating systems, old and new, such as WindowsNT and others are also being developed, the latest is Vista which has only recently been released.
The programs, which are installed on a computer, are called software and the parts of the computer you can touch and use, such as the keyboard and mouse are called hardware. Not surprisingly, software has to be designed to work in co-operation with the hardware of a PC. Nowadays operating systems need special programs to be added to Windows to enable all the hardware to work properly. These special programs used to be installed on a CD that accompanied a new PC. They have a special name, drivers.
All the programs installed on a PC are stored in a special device called a hard disk or hard drive. Hard disks are an amazing feat of modern engineering that are about the size of a paperback book and can store incredible amounts of information.
Inside a hard drive are a number of disks coated with a magnetic material. The disks rotate and devices called heads move across the disks pulsing them with electricity to write instructions and sense instructions that have already been written to the disks. Each little instruction is incredibly and microscopically small. Like the tape in a tape recorder, the instructions can be changed.
This gives rise to two problems. Sometimes authentic instructions get changed when they should not and hard disks wear out. When a hard disk wears out or instructions get changed the whole PC will stop working and the PC is said to have crashed. When instructions have changed so badly that the PC crashes or programs do not work properly we say the data has been corrupted.
What this means for the average PC user is that either they will need to have a new hard disk fitted and the operating system and drivers will have to be installed as they were at the factory or the instructions on a corrupted but good hard drive will have to be installed all over again. This is often done through a process that first removes all previous instructions, called formatting, so that all programs can be reinstalled, as they were when the computer left the factory or PC builder.
So, in practical layman terms what does this mean?
Absolutely essential information!
Here you are, a few days, weeks, months or years after you have brought your shiny smart new PC and the system crashes. Either a new hard disk need programming or the old one needs to be formatted and reprogrammed.
And this is where the crunch comes!
A few years ago a PC purchased from a large High Street retailer would have a number of CDs supplied with the PC. These would have included a CD with an operating system, a CD with drivers on it and a CD with other useful programs such as a so called Office program which installed a word processor, spread sheets and other beneficial programs. Some retailers supplied CDs called Restore CDs which would restore the software to the factory condition by following a simple set of instructions, very useful for someone who did not have much know how about PCs.
A PC purchased from a private PC builder would be supplied with an operating system CD and a driver CD. The buyer would have to pay a bit extra for the operating system CD because some software is licensed but once they had bought the CD they could install the operating system on another PC they owned provided they removed the operating system from the original PC.
This has all changed.
Nowadays a new PC will have the restore software installed on the hard disk. The installation process may be activated by a floppy disk or by keyboard operation.
Either way it puts the restore process at risk. If the hard disk fails outside the warranty period of the PC tough. If the restore data gets corrupted outside the warranty period tough. You can buy an operating system CD quite easily, but the driver CD is another matter!
To their credit Microsoft operating systems actually include drivers on the CD and on some older PCs, Windows will have all the drivers the system needs. More modern systems usually need some drivers in addition to Windows drivers and if you do not have them on an independent CD you are going to have a PC that is severely limited in what it can do after re-installation of the operating system. Some people would say this is a scam because it forces a PC owner to have their system restored at the place of purchase and very expensive it can be.
One or two PCs with this arrangement do have the facility for the owner to make backup CDs from which the system can be restored at a later date, but these are few and far between and the need for the procedure and how to do it is not apparent to the buyer who has just bought their first PC.
There is an old saying in the modern PC industry. There are two types of people with hard disks, those whose hard disks have failed and those whose hard disk will fail. Dismal as this sounds, it is actually perfectly true.
The need to be able to restore the software on a PC is critical, even if you are one of those lucky and careful people who does not install programs unsuitable for your particular PC, who does not visit internet websites notorious for having viruses lurking on them and who maintains their PC carefully and in consequence extend the life of their hard disk and the integrity of their software.
The reality of home computing is that children are very conversant with using PCs. But, children are children and they will experiment, install software lent by friends, visit all sorts of web sites and do just about everything that will cause the family PC to need all it is software reinstalling every few weeks. Some adults are just the same.
So, being able to restore the software on your PC is a basic necessity.
Let us imagine you have owned your PC for thirteen months which means it is just outside the retailers warranty period. Your eight year old son or daughter finds a CD in a cereal packet and installs an exciting Star Wars type game on the PC you use to work from at home. The CD, it is claimed, will run on any PC but after it has been installed on your PC, lo and behold your system crashes.
What are you going to do?
The first thing you might do is read the manual that came with the PC when you bought it. You follow the step-by-step instructions that tell you to put a floppy disk, supplied with the PC, into its floppy drive and restart the computer. The restore process begins but halts because the restore information on the hard disk has been corrupted. In desperation you disconnect the PC and take it to the store you bought it from. The assistant is very helpful but does not understand why the system will not restore. Fortunately the store has a technical department and they try to restore it, but cannot - because the restore information has been corrupted. They do however sell you a new operating system and wish you luck with restoring the PC, after charging you heavily for the advice.
You manage to install the operating system but find you can no longer hear any sound from it and other features do not seem to work either. This is because you do not have a driver CD that was never supplied with the PC in the first place. You now have a potentially expensive choice to make.
Probably the best way forward is to find a local PC builder who may have stored many different drivers which they have in stock and they find one which they already have and download some others from the internet. Another bill, sorry.
All this might apply in like fashion if you have bought a second user PC and it has been supplied without any restore CDs. Second user computers are notorious for being sold without restore or system CDs!
This is a scenario all too common. How can it be avoided?
It may be too late for your existing PC, although a good PC builder ought to be able to supply you with any drivers you need for future restores.
But, if and when you purchase your next PC you will be wiser than before. If you have never bought a new PC and are reading this before buying one, take careful note of the information and advice now being offered.
The reasons that new PCs are sold with all the restore information on the hard disk are to do with marketing and profits. PC manufacturers and retailers have a fiscal arrangement with Microsoft so that all the restore information is quickly and easily installed on the hard disk and is sold with a licensed and genuine Windows operating system. Some large retailers gain from this too because when a PC owner has problems with restoring the software on their PC they obtain business in restoring PCs.
So what now?
The advice given here is two fold. If you purchase a PC from a large store insist on seeing the restore CDs and making sure they will be in your possession before you commit any money to the store. If the salesperson will not show you the CDs, have nothing to do with the store! They will be very persuasive in telling you that restore is reliable using the process without restore CDs, but you will be persuaded at your cost.
The better alternative is a local PC builder. You are advised to research who the better PC builders are just as you would if seeking a builder or driving school. Having found a reliable PC builder - and that might be a small business with a handful of employees or a one man business, ask if the restore or system CDs will be supplied with the PC. Make sure you see them and they are in your possession before you take the PC home. You will also need to ask if the deal includes an operating system and if the operating system CD will be supplied with the PC.
You might already have an operating system CD that you have previously purchased and this could be installed on the PC as part of the deal.
Using a PC builder has a number of advantages. A PC builder is usually able to advise you on the specification of your new PC and will take into account the way you anticipate using it. You might build up a relationship with the PC builder who may be happy to give you some advice about your PC, providing you do not try to spend hours on the telephone every time you have a minor problem. A local PC builder can more easily upgrade your PC when you find you need additional hardware or software, which most PC owners do from time to time (usually so their children or husbands can use the latest flight simulator). A local PC builder will build their business on their reputation and will want that to be good, a real plus for the customer.
Another more subtle plus for using a PC builder is they can be flexible in the choice of operating systems and software installed on a PC. The reality of software development is that some software simply will not work on some operating systems. Operating systems such as Windows2000 and WindowsXP are very stable, but sometimes software costing hundreds of pounds, which your business relies on, will not work with them because they have been designed to work on Windows9x series operating systems.
One or two PC builders may do part exchange deals with customers who have bought PCs from them. If they do not do part exchange deals they are still a good proposition however.
Some other points
One of the strengths of the large stores is that they are able to offer extended warranties on PCs. This can be useful for the novice type PC user, but extended warranties do have certain disadvantages to be born in mind.
If you buy a washing machine, extended warranties are a good investment. This is because basic washing machines have not really changed that much in the last twenty or more years. True, they might have an electronic controller and incorporate a spin dryer and tumble dryer, but a basic washing machine has not fundamentally changed and is unlikely to do so.
The same is not true of PCs. The capacity and speeds of PCs are changing very rapidly. A few years ago the speed and capacity of a PC was doubling about every eighteen months. It is probably faster than that at present, but even if and when the rate of change of PCs slows down in one respect it will broaden in other respects. It is now possible to buy PCs that will record programmes direct from a television broadcast or videotape, which can display information on separate monitors and can communicate with other PCs through networks in the home or office. That is not all and there is much more to come.
If you are tied to a five-year extended warranty period you will be well advised to enquire it the warranty can be transferred to a new PC if you decide to invest in a model with greater capability in two years time. We suspect the salesmans response will vary between the slightly obscene and humorous.
There is a part of the PC you may need, or someone may need to alter called the BIOS (Basic Input Output System). Sometimes it is impossible to get into it because it is possible to make access available only if you know a password. Ask to see if the BIOS can be accessed.
Find out how big the hard disk is. If you want to run WindowsXP you will soon have problems using a hard disk much less than 15 gigabyte (1 gigabyte = 1000 megabytes). It will just about run on 10 gigs but you will be very restricted on what other software you can then use. 80 gigs is currently the minimum size hard disk on most new PCs. Windows Vista and Windows 7 really need a minimum of 256 gigs.
Find out how fast the processor is. It is a bit hard to say what to settle for here. If you anticipate playing lots of games and frequently using the internet then you will be advised to look for a minimum speed round about 1000 megahertz. If you know for sure you are only going to use the PC for mainly word processing then processor speeds as low as 266 megahertz will be quite adequate using Windows9x. New PCs often have processor speed as high as 3+ gigahertz.
Ask if the PC has USB ports. Most modern printers, scanners and other devices are designed to connect to a PC through a USB connector. Broadband Internet connection is usually through a LAN connector, although it can be connected through a USB port.
Operating systems.
So far I have mentioned things like Windows 9x, Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7.
These are not the only fish in the sea!
These days Linux operating systems provide a viable and very user friendly alternative to Microsoft's operating systems.
These can be installed on new and older PCs and with many versions to choose from there will be a version to suit everyone. Most versions of Linux can be downloaded from the internet and you can create a 'live' CD - which means the PC can be booted from the CD and the operating system will run in the RAM only so you can examine it without modifying your hard drive.
To find out more visit some of the links below:-
In conclusion
This is a far from comprehensive guide to buying a PC but it will hopefully make you aware of some of the pitfalls of buying new and second user PCs. In particular we would want to emphasise again the need to be able to restore a PC whether bought new or second user. We may be promoting the small PC builder over the high street retailer but that is because we believe that is where the best deals come from. Good luck with your new PC.