Many people when going to buy a new computer have no idea what they are looking at.  This section will help people understand the numbers and features of a modern computers.  Before even looking at the numbers you need to be aware of what you want to do with your computer.  Will it be mostly for internet and or word processing?  Will you be playing video games or doing graphical design (beyond basic photo editing)?  Will you be using your computer for music and video playback?  Is this just a computer to learn how to use a computer?  You also need to decide whether or not you need something portable, stationary, or somewhere in-between.  Lastly and probably the most important is how much you willing to learn and how much time are you willing to put in to being knowledgeable about the functionality of your computer.  If you are not willing to invest a significant amount of time into learning how to use a computer you may better to stay away from computers until you are ready.  Also let your investment in your computer reflect your willingness to invest time into it.  If you are not willing to learn a great deal, and you just want to use email, internet, and word processing just get a fairly inexpensive unit.  If you want to have a computer run the light, TV, and stereo in your home you had better be ready to invest quite a bit of time and money.

                Now I would like to put to rest a few misconceptions about computers, what they do, and don’t do.  Do not be fool about what makes a computer fast or restricts its functionality.  First thing I have to say is the speed of the computer has nothing to do with how fast the internet will be; all modern processors will handle extremely fast internet.  Your speed to the internet is limited by your internet service provider, and your connection type.  Next up is how much RAM(memory) is enough?  More is always better however RAM is expensive and after a certain point the benefits of additional RAM is almost nil.  Windows XP requires 256MB but since the inception of service pack 2 I don’t recommend less than 512MB, and feel comfortable recommending 1GB for all but the most basic machines.  Beyond 1GB of RAM in Windows XP you will not see much improvement except in the most intensive applications.  For the new Windows Vista 512MB is required, though I don’t recommend running it with less than 1GB.  So far Vista appears to be very memory intensive and I don’t think that 3GB is excessive.  Processor speed is also an issue, how fast is fast?  Generally 2GHZ is the starting point these days this is fast enough for any of the available consumer operating systems.   If you intend to play games, do graphics, and or lots of multimedia you should look for 3GHz or more.  Many processors are moving to dual cores.  This means you get two processors in one chip, one misconception is that this effectively doubles your speed.  This is not true, the second processor is generally not in use except when you are doing more than one thing at a time.  This is particularly prevalent in games where the load for all the games graphics, sound, and processes falling on one core and the other core being virtually unused.  Windows Vista is designed to take advantage to some extent of both cores, but unless you run multiple programs in any operating system you are only going to need one processor.   If you are going to use your computer for graphic design, or gaming the most important part will be the video card.  The video card carries almost all the load for graphical applications in modern computers.  If you are going to do anything graphically intensive do yourself a favor and make sure your video card has got some meat.

                Well those are the basics anyway.  Hope this will help you understand what you want or need a little better.