PC Buying Guide, Christmas 99

With Christmas approaching, the PC retail trade is girding its loins for it's best two months of the year. In case you're thinking of joining the ranks of Blair's Information Elite, I've cobbled together a few words of advice. Although this is a vast topic that I can't hope to do real justice to in a few hundred words, hopefully this may help you avoid buying two turkeys this year.

Firstly, if you possibly can, wait until January. The first few weeks of January see the sharpest fall in PC prices of the year, as the prices are held high over Christmas and then drop to where they should be.

Secondly, don't buy from places like PC World or Dixons unless you have a very good reason. These places have nationwide chains of shops and armies of staff that all require heat, rent and salaries and you'd better believe that the customers are paying for all this.

If you're confident, investigate smaller, mail-order suppliers such as Dabs, Insight, or Simply. If you're really nervous and would appreciate some big-brand comfort, try buying direct from Dell, Compaq or Hewlett Packard. All of these places do mail order PCs with good warranties, fast deliveries, and prices that PC World can only dream about, coupled to sales staff who actually know stuff.

On the other hand, if you're REALLY confident, buy MicroMart and try some of the small mail order firms - I can personally recommend Aria in Manchester, Eclipse in Coventry, and Stak in Rugby, but there are many good companies. It is in this part of the PC market that pricing is most fiercely competitive and the best bargains can be had.

So that's the where, but what about the what? What do all those numbers in PC ads actually mean? Well, it is important to remember that the PC is a series of components stuck together and that each component has an individual specification that is independent of the other components. Thus, there are about a half-dozen numbers that any PC can be boiled down to.

First, there's processor speed. 300MHz is the lowest of the low these days, although still pretty adequate for a word processing machine. If you want to play games or do graphics editing, 500MHz is a good minumum speed to aim for, preferably an Intel Pentium III or an AMD Athlon. If the budget is tight, the Intel Celeron gives the most bang for the bucks.

32Mb is bar minimum of RAM and 64Mb is a healthier amount; unfortunately, the latest earthquakes in the Far East have disrupted production and pushed prices through the roof. Similarly, 4Gb is a minimum hard disk drive size and 8.4Gb a good size to aim for.

Graphics cards are a thorny territory if you want to play games; to cut a long story short, anything on the following list is OK: 3Dfx Voodoo 3, nVidia TNT2, nVidia GeForce 256, Matrox G400. Note that some of these are just chips that are plugged into boards made by other people; for example, the Diamond Viper V770 uses the TNT2 chip. Always ask which chipset the board uses if you're unsure. If you don't want to play games, almost anything will do.

Monitors should be at least 15" in size and preferably a good one; this is unfortunately very hard to know without actually looking at it. This is where PC World comes in handy - trek down to it, maul their products and decide which ones you like, and then buy them mail order cheaper.

The speed of CD-Rom drives is far less important than many manufacturers would have you believe and almost anything over 30x or so will be fine. DVD is a neat bonus, but be prepared to pay an extra £50 or so for the privilege.

Finally, things like modems, network cards, joysticks and subwoofers you either want or you don't. If you don't, and it comes included in the machine, then ask for it to be swapped for something you do want, like more software. If the company won't play ball, go somewhere else - the PC retail industry is a buyer's market, after all.

How do you decide what to buy? First, set a solid budget and stick to it. Then, go to each possible company in turn and work out what they can give you for the budget. I'd do this for at least three or four companies, to make sure you get a good deal, and ideally for as many as you can stomach the thought of calling for quotes. Once you have a list of machines in front of you, each matched to your budget, it's much easier to pick one that suits your requirements, having already take care of suiting your wallet.

On the subject of setting budgets, whatever you do, don't ever spend more than £1000 or so on a PC system. The acceleration of technology is so fast these days that you can't possible future-proof beyond two years anyway, so spend less money now and be prepared to buy a new system later. Don't spend thousands of pounds whilst telling yourself that it'll last you for four years or so, because it'll go obsolete just as fast as a budget system that would have cost you far less initially.

To give you an idea, I spent £600 on an almost-complete PC system 15 months ago (I already had a monitor) and it's been able to play every game on the market since. I'm going to spend about £250 on new bits in January, then it'll last me through to next January without any further upgrades. If you're careful what you buy, and willing to upgrade regularly, then even ninja PCs don't have to be expensive.

Finally, the most important tip of all - if you're buying mail order, ALWAYS pay by credit card. If the owner of Honest Don's PC Supplies disappears to Ibiza with your money, then the nice folks who own your card are legally obliged to give you the money back. This protection does not apply to debit cards (ie. Switch/Delta), but only to Visa and MasterCard (and AmEx,if you're that way inclined).

So, if you're careful, and do your homework, buying a PC can be a rewarding experience.