Reading the title of this week's column, most of my faithful readers will assume that I am going to talk about the latest entry level PCs. Wrong-O! I am going to address the new entry level of LIFE in the fast lane. What motivated me to do this was seeing the lines of people at the Barbee Library on Oak Island, mostly vacationers, all waiting for their chance to get a few minutes on the Internet to get e-mail and relieve their Internet cravings.
First of all, you DO need a new PC. Not only have PCs become much more capable (including Windows XP which is now pretty much mandatory for any home or office user), but they are becoming dirt cheap as well. Don't argue. Just go out a buy a new one, and get someone who knows what they are doing to help you migrate your old programs and data. If your PC is more than 3 years old, or its not running Windows 2000 Professional or Windows XP, its time to upgrade.
Get at least 512MB of RAM and at least a 60GB hard drive. 1GB of RAM and a 120GB hard drive would be better, especially if you are going to do serious video editing and movie creation.
Get a sound card with full Dolby 5.1 (or 6.1 now) sound. Get a speaker system with 5 speakers plus subwoofer. Get a DVD player, preferable a DVD writer. A DVD writer that does both standards (DVD+R and DVD-R) would be best. Get software to play DVDs on your PC - I like PowerDVD. Get a Logitech MX-700 wireless mouse - expensive but excellent. Get a flat screen LCD monitor; the 17" ones are becoming reasonably priced now.
Get a digital camera. They are very inexpensive now, and all take excellent photos. Get a 3 or 4 megapixel unit (unless you need more) with at least 3X optical zoom. Ignore digital zoon - it's just a marketing gimmick. I bought a couple of Canon A70's lately and they are terrific - you can get it for under $300. Get plenty of extra memory cards - You can get a 256MB card for about $50 these days, and much larger cards are now available. Get a memory card reader for your PC (make sure you get the higher speed USB 2) and greatly speed the process of getting photos into your PC. These are cheap - about $25. Get some good photo-editing software, such as Adobe Photoshop Elements 2, and a good photo-organizing program such as Thumbs Plus (www.cerious.com).
Get a new printer with photo printing capability. I have always favored Epson printers, but Canon is coming on strong these days.
Get a portable MP3 music player. The ones with hard drives in them can literally hold your entire music collection in the palm of your hand. The players without hard drives can store 256MB of music and are plenty for a short trip or day at the beach. Good headphones are a plus.
Of course you have high speed Internet - right? Dial-up is just too slow and unreliable. Spend the extra $25 per month and move up - you won't regret it. And since neither Road Runner nor DSL requires long-term commitments, you can always cancel if you don't like them. A high-speed connection these days is mandatory for system maintenance to get fixes and updates from Microsoft and for your other software.
You need a wireless home network. Add a wireless router to your cable to DSL modem, or replacing you current router with a wireless unit. Then, you can use your new notebook computer anywhere in the house, or add your kitchen counter computer without running cables. You can also synchronize your Wi-Fi enabled palm unit.
Now that you have purchased all this stuff, you are at the entry level of today's hi-tech world. In the future, I will start you on the really advanced stuff!
(Bob Seidel is a local computer consultant in the Southport / Oak Island area. You can visit his website at www.bobseidel.com or e-mail him at bsc@bobseidel.com).