by Jason Quinn

Created on: May 02, 2007   Last Updated: May 03, 2007

Most people don't know much about computers. They don't know how various components speed up the computer's speed, so they happily and ignorantly blow masses of cash on top of the line machines that harbour many components they don't even need.

Although computer power decreases quite quickly when compared to recent additions to the market, you do not need to buy into dual core, quad core, many gigabytes of storage space or the latest processor.

When you need a computer just for general internet browsing, managing your finances and writing up documents you will save spades of your precious gold by buying only what is needed for your computer.
For instance; 1.8 GHz processor, 500mb of ram, 20-40 GB storage space would be a perfectly good machine for the aforementioned tasks and even more, as it could also handle playing music and movies (albeit struggling slightly with the movies).

You could even buy a computer second hand that would still be capable of these tasks and as it's second hand, you would get a very reasonable price.

If you notice your computer is beginning to slow down after a year or so you can upgrade. That is a much more viable option than buying an all-out expensive computer in the first place, as when you upgrade you are more likely to buy components specific to what you want. If you want your computer to open and load documents faster; buy RAM. If you want more storage space; upgrade your disk drive to a larger capacity.
It's as simple as that!

Alternatively to upgrading your computer, you could run System Clean up', delete old files, run Disk Defragmenter' and making sure it is just generally virus free.

Good luck and Have fun!

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