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There are several things that a person should be aware of when buying a computer, lets first go over the main components of a computer. The main components are the monitor, keyboard, mouse, case, motherboard, video card, sound card, power supply, floppy drives, CD drives, Processor, and RAM.

This list of items is standard in all computers but the good news is when buying a computer you only need to focus on a few things. The first thing you should focus on is Processor Speed (Commonly refered to as the CPU), the CPU speed is measured in a number of way's, the main one's are Mghz and Ghz, in our day and age do not buy anything with the name Mghz go with Ghz, the average size now (November 14, 2006) is around 2.5 to 3.1 Ghz CPU Speed.

The second thing to look for is how much RAM there is, now this number is going to be around 1 Gb for the average consumer but it can get as large as 4 Gb (refer to bottom of page for the meaning of Mb, Gb, Mghz & Ghz), basicly the RAM is what makes your computer run faster, the higher the RAM the more things you will be able to do at once without the computer slowing down.

The third thing to take note of is the Hard Drive size, the hard drive size is measured in Mb, Gb, & TB, the average consumer will want a hard drive size in between 60 Gb and 120 Gb depending on how much information you need to store. Note: if the person selling you the computer say's the hard drive has so many Mb then run the other way without hesitation. :-)

The first three things I talked about are what you should be looking out for the most, these last couple things you do not have to pay a too much attention too, with exception of the Video Card.

The Sound Card, Mouse, Keyboard, and Monitor are all pritty decent now a days for the average consumer, there pritty basic, unless you plan on doing some advanced things with your computer.

The only real thing you should look for in a Video card is how many Mb's it has the best ones for the average consumer is around 256 Mb.

The above examples all depend on what your going to be using the computer for, for instance a hard core gamer may want to have a better sound card, video card, and power supply, but an office computer may want more hard drive space. At the very least ask the salesman lots of questions about the first three items CPU Speed, Hard Drive size, and RAM size.

Above I talked about Mb, Gb, TB, Mghz, and Ghz. Here is what they all mean starting from the first computers up until now.

Hard Drive Size And CPU Speed Conversions Below

1024 bytes = 1 Kilobyte (Kb), Super Old Computer
1024 Kilobytes = 1 Megabyte (Mb), Old Computer
1024 Megabytes = 1 Gigabyte (Gb), Todays Standard
1024 Gigabytes = 1 Terabyte (TB), For Advanced Users Only.

The same holds true for Megahertz (Mghz) and Gigahertz (Ghz), 1024 Megahertz = 1 Gigahert.

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