Buying/Building your own PC. Ryan Allen

Price  $500 or less  $1000-$2000  $2000+

Mobility  Desktop Ability to expand. Affordable  Laptop Mobile More Costly Small with less space taken.

Name Brand  Dell America’s Computer Affordable  HP/Compaq  Sony Vaio  Toshiba  Apple  Alienware  Falcon  eMachines

Operating Systems  Linux  Microsoft Windows  Apple Leopard

Processors  Intel Xeon Centrino Core 2 Extreme Core 2 Duo  AMD Athlon 64 Athlon 64 X2 Sempron

Monitor  17”+ LCD Widescreen Flat Panel Widescreen Digital Flat Panel Ultrasharp Widescreen Digital Flat Planel

Memory  Help improve multi-tasking, speed up gaming, and take your PC’s performance even higher with increased RAM. 256 MB - 4GB Single or Dual Channel DDR or SD RAM 667MHz – 4DIMMs

Hard Drive Capacity  More space means more room for your memories – keep your pictures, music, videos, and more on one hard drive. 60GB’s-5TB’s SATA or IDE High RPM Also maybe a Recovery Disk

Optical Drives  CD-ROM Read only Memory  DVD-ROM Read only CD’s and DVD’s  DVD+/-RW Drive Rewritable  Suggested to buy two optical drives.

Video Card  Higher Performace wideo cards can speed up your whole PC and make viewing pictures, videos and games more enjoyable. NVIDIA or ATI PCI Express (fast) AGP (Acceptable) SLI (Gamer Status)

Sound Card  Motherboard based is acceptable.  Usually with a high powered sound card it is recommended you have a powerful speakers.

Printers  Inkjet More common Cartridges are less expensive Cartridge change more often  Laser More Expense especially the color ones. More Business oriented Faster prints Cartridges need changing less.

Mice and Keyboards  Mouse Optical or Laser Wireless or Wired  Keyboard Wireless or Wired Gamer Keys Fast Keys Enhanced Multimedia Keyboard