What NOT To Buy

by Bob Seidel

Technology marches on! What was the latest and greatest last year is often on today's discount rack. You always have the choice - the latest technology vs. the cost. Many people in this area take the low road - if it was good enough last year, it's good enough now. Others like to be on the bleeding edge. You might think that I am a bleeding edge person, but in fact I am fairly middle-of-the-road on technology.

Even given this, there are certain situations in which you just don't want the older technology. Hopefully this column will guide you.

Don't consider anything but Windows XP. The older operating systems are far inferior and barely being maintained any longer by Microsoft. You almost cannot buy a new system these days without XP, but if you are shopping for a used computer you should not buy a computer that does not have XP. For normal home and small business use, it does not matter whether you get XP Home or XP Professional.

Don't buy a PC with less than a 2.0 Ghz processor. Don't get less than 256MB of RAM and avoid those systems that share the RAM with video memory. 512MB of RAM would be better.

Stick to USB 2.0. The older and slower version of USB (1.1) applies only to low speed devices such as keyboards and mice. If you are shopping for a digital camera, for example, having USB 2.0 will significantly improve the performance of uploading photos from the camera to your PC. If you buy a USB hub to support more than one USB device, stick with USB 2.0 - you will still be able to plug in USB 1.1 devices with no problem. Of course, your PC needs to have USB 2.0, but if it doesn't, for sure you next one will.

Don't buy just a CD-ROM drive. These days, CD writers (CD-RW) are fairly inexpensive, or get a DVD reader that will also read CDs.

Watch out for very low-end printers. I have heard of printers that cost less than a set of ink cartridges! The cost of ink in the future will often be far more than the cost of the printer. The lesson here is that you shouldn't be too cheap on the initial printer price. Buy the printer quality that you need. The price of ink cartridges are almost the same, whether it's for a low end printer or a more expensive one.

Don't use inexpensive paper to print your photos. Good photo quality requires good paper. You are wasting your expensive ink if you use the wrong grade of paper.

Oh, and speaking of printers, stay away from those multifunction units, where you get a printer, FAX, copier and scanner in one unit. My experience is that they are compromise units at best. Also, the drivers are very touchy, difficult to install, and tend to fail. Unless you absolutely need one of those, my advice is to stay away.

Don't get less than a 3 megapixel digital camera - you won't be happy with the quality. Don't be concerned with the size of the included photo memory card - you will almost certainly be buying more anyhow.

Well, that's it for my series of shopping articles for this year. If anyone has any questions, please email me and I will try to get it into a future column. Happy shopping!

Bob Seidel is a local computer consultant in the Southport / Oak Island area. You can visit his web site at www.bobseidel.com or e-mail questions or column ideas to him at bsc@bobseidel.com. For specific inquiries, please call Bob Seidel Consulting, LLC at 278-1007.