1	A Guide to Buying Your PC Brought to you by Unique PC
2	Buying Tips Make sure that the computer you buy matches your needs and gives you enough room for growth, so you’ll protect your investment and be happy with your purchase over a long haul. When it comes to computer power, focus on how much will be suitable for your needs. An apparently powerful, bargain priced computer advertised as having a fast clock speed, can turn out to be a false economy. Overall speed depends on more than just the processor. A well designed, fully tested system will have components that work together for best performance, and will have the flexibility and expandability to grow. When comparing computer features, reliability is difficult to assess. But the length of the warranty offered by a company is a clue to the dependability of its computers.
3	Definitions CPU – Central Processing Unit. Another term for the microprocessor of “brain” RAM – Random Access Memory is the area where a computer temporarily stores information it is processing. HARD DRIVE – a storage device, that permanently stores information, that can be quickly accessed. MegaHertz (MHz) – a measurement of frequency used to express a computer’s processing speed. One MHz is one million cycles per second Byte – Eight Bits. A byte is one character stored in your computer or one unit of information. Bytes are used as a measure of storage ( as megabytes and gigabytes ) to define how much information a particular computer is capable of storing in memory.
4	What is a Computer Power? Computer Power, actually and expression of the CPU’s capability , is measured in two ways: Capacity: the CPU processes or computes electronic bits of information. The number of bits it can handle at once is one measure of its power. Today’s modern CPU’s are a 64 bit. Clock speed: The clock speed of a processor is measured by the number of electronic pulses it can produce in a second. Clock speed is built into the processor and is measured in gigahertz (GHz). Since giga means billion and hertz means times (cycles) per second, 1.0 GHz is 1 billion times per second. The speed of older, slower processors was measured in megahertz (MHz). Since mega means million, 500 MHz is 500 million times per second.
5	The basic components of a computer system Motherboard (containing the processor and memory), keyboard, mouse, monitor, diskette drive, CD-ROM drive, and hard drive. In addition to these, there are several other types of devices that you may or may not want to include in your computer purchase, such as a trackball, joy stick, modem, tape drive, zip drive, printer, plotter, scanner, sound card and speakers, TV card, video capture card, power supply backup, and surge protector. Whether you need any of these other devices or not will depend on which software applications that you intend to use. Also, if you are short on money when you buy your computer or decide that you need one or more of these items later on, you shouldn't have any problem installing these after the original purchase has been made, just make sure you buy components that are compatible with your system.