Friday, September 27, 2013

Buying A Computer For School Or College

It’s that time of year again and many of you will be heading back to school/college and deciding on what to do about a computer. If you are buying a new computer the news is both good and bad as you now have a mind boggling choice of computing devices. To quote a very old saying “The devil is in the detail” so before buying I would suggest you consider the contents of this article as an aid to making your decision.

Which Device – Desktop Laptop Tablet ?
Desktops
By far the best value for your Euro is still the desktop computer but you will need to do some work to get your hands on a decent model. With the shortage of cash in the economy and poor sales, the  computer shops are offering low quality cheap desktop computers. These machines are dog slow and the performance is dreadful. To add to the misery most are now installed with Windows 8, which so far is proving very unpopular. The response has been so bad that just months after it’s release Microsoft is due to release a major update to address the bugs. This latest offering from Microsoft is designed to work with a touch screen and unless the desktop comes with a touch screen forget buying a desktop pc with windows 8 unless you can also install windows 7. 

Laptops
90% of the computers I repair originate from three manufacturers. For legal reasons I cannot mention their names but if you talk to a couple of your friends about their experiences you’ll quickly know which ones to avoid. In my opinion the best laptops on the market are from Lenovo and Toshiba.  As with the desktop do not get a model with windows 8 and ensure that the laptop has at least 6 gigabytes of ram.

Tablets
If there is one thing you take away from this article it should be this “do not buy a tablet as a computer”. These devices are great for on the go computing but if you store information on them you are very likely to lose it when it gets damaged. The honeymoon with tablets is in full swing at the moment as sales are rocketing. The Apple ipad and Samsung models lead the pack in this area. 


Protecting Your Data
Next month I will discuss how to effectively safeguard your data no matter what device you buy. Good hunting.