[thelist] computers

----- Original Message -----
From: "the head lemur" <lemurs@extremezone.com>
To: <thelist@lists.evolt.org>
Sent: Monday, May 08, 2000 9:34 AM
Subject: Re: [thelist] computers


|
| build it yourself....
| packaged machines have attractive pricing with the following
deficits.
| to keep the price down the
| sound, video, modem, and are on the motherboard.
| one dies, toss out the baby with the bathwater...
| when your machine crashes you will be spending a lot of time
at the mfg.
| site downloading all of the drivers to make everything on
the mother board
| live again...
|

Actually, Dell uses off-board parts...straight off the shelf.
:-)  They just customize the drivers for smoother operations.


|
| get a big box with lots of space..
| motherboard with upgradable BIOS
| chips faster than 400mz. are nice but not required unless
you plan on doing
| a lot of spread sheet recalculation, databasing, or
graphics...


|
| memory
| at least 128 mb of fast ram

Amen.  Luckily, this is becoming fairly standard
|
| the visual bit
| 17" monitor -.28 dot pitch
| video card at least 8mb of onboard video memory
| (screen redraws are dependant on loading video refresh off
the processor)
|

You can get a 21'' for not much more than the 19'', and the
19'' is usually only a hundred dollars or so more than the
17--go for the size.  Makes for good visual presentation
should you need to demo a site.

| the noise bit.
| sound card and speakers
| (i am tone deaf and don't listen to tunes while i work so
someone else will
| need to guide you here)
|

Unless you do heavy sound editing or gaming, get the basic
soundcard offered by the manufacturer--so long as it is not
on-board.
| modems
| 56k
| you can always upgrade to cable,ISDN, DSL ect.
| but a modem will get you through times of no connectivity
with other
| services.
|
| Zip drive..Internal!
| essential to backup data
| 100mbs are standard 250s are nice but the portability of
data becomes harder
| as the installed base of 250s is not that large

Go External USB--it's almost as fast as the IDE and it can go
just about anywhere.  Plug-and-Play autodetection coupled with
a 5k "guest.exe" driver to run it on any pc make the External
the way to go. Portability.

| harddrives
| multiple drives or multiple partitions
<SNIP>

Keep it simple--get a ten-twenty gig IDE HDD, and break it
into three partitions as follows:
1) OS/Programs-3Gig
2) Data/Files-4Gig
3) Backups-3Gig

That way, if anything ever goes down, it's on the three gig
"E" drive.
|
| keyboard...generic keyboards 101 keys
| adding a feature rich keyboard is just one more layer of
software to go bad
|
Actually, Win98 + usually supports "feature rich" keyboards
without added software.   As a matter of fact, I have a Compaq
at home (my wife's computer) and it has the nifty little
buttons for email, web, etc.  And it uses a piece of software
that is so neglidgible in resource useage, the benefits
outweigh the cost.  Also, on 128 mb's of ram, you've got
resources to spare.


With a three year, *next business day onsite warrantee*, the
config above is about $1900 with an 800Mhz. cpu.

--
Sincerely yours,

M. Shane DeVault
   Bayou Internet
    888-302-2968, ext. 2038    (888-30BAYOU)
ShaneD@bayou.com      visit me online at:
http://www.bayou.com/shaned