ITS Computer Buying Guide

Table of Contents

• Step 1: Types of Use
• Step 2: Laptop vs. Desktop, PC vs. Mac
• Step 3: Individual Platforms
  • Laptop - PC
  • Laptop - Mac
  • Desktop - PC
  • Desktop - Mac
• Step 4: After your computer arrives
  • PC
  • Mac

Step 3: Laptop - PC

Price range:

• Normal: $700-$1400
• Extended: $1200-$1700
• Power User: $1800-$4000

Please note: It is not necessary read all of this section. The information provided here exists for those people who want to know exactly what it is that they are buying. If you just want a quick summary, see our summarized configuration list. Also, if you read anything, please check out our memory (RAM) section.

Manufacturers

We lowly students at ITS can't officially suggest one brand over another, but here's a list of popular ones (ranked in no particular order):

Main-stream manufacterers

These manufacturers sell mostly laptops for "normal" and "extended" users, although each usually offers one "high-end" machine or two (for a premium)

• Dell
• Lenovo (Previously IBM)
• Sony
• Gateway
• HP
• Toshiba

Specialized manufacturers

These manufacturers tend to offer laptops for the "extended" and "power users" out there.

• Sager
• Acer
• Alienware
• Falcon Northwest
• Voodoo-PC
• Hypersonic PC

Most of these companies sell their products directly from their web sites. You can also try third-party websites such as NewEgg, Discount Laptops, eBay, and others, but keep in mind that machines sold from these websites may or may not come with a warranty (it should be specified). In particular, used computers bought from eBay are unlikely to come with warranties, so be careful.

Things to consider when choosing a manufacturer:

• The features you want - This seems simple but trips up many inexperienced buyers. Make sure you're buying what you want - if you want to watch movies on your machine, make sure that your manufacturer offers a laptop with a DVD drive - if not, go somewhere else.
• Warranties - What kind of warranty does the manufacturer offer? How long does it last? If something breaks, do you have to send them your machine, or will they send someone out to fix it? Most major manufacturers offer many different warranty plans above the basic. Generally the included warranty is one year. We strongly recommend buying an extended warranty, considering that your laptop will be a considerable investment and laptops are very hard to service (We at ITS are unable to do hardware repairs).
• Tech support - Does the manufacturer have 24/7 tech support? Look up your manufacturer on Reseller Ratings for some clues (although take this information with a grain of salt). This PCWorld article is also a good place to look.
• Do they offer educational discouts? - Some do, some don't (typically it's the larger ones that do). Make sure to root around on each company's website or call the company to see if they offer something like this.

Customizing your laptop: what to choose

Almost all manufacturers now allow buyers at least some form of customization, which is a good thing, but can also lead to a baffling amount of poorly-explained options. If you'd rather not read through lots of explanation, just check out the Normal/Extended/Power User suggested configurations at the beginning of every entry, or the summarized version.

Remember that there's no rush here. You have all summer to decide, so do your homework and make sure you're happy with what you're buying. Once you've finally ordered your machine, go on to Step 4.

Step 4: After your computer arrives >>>>

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Processor

Normal:

Intel Celeron M processors
Intel Penitum M processors
Intel Core Solo processors
AMD Mobile Sempron processors
VIA processors

Extended:

Intel Core Duo processors
AMD Turion 64 processors

Power User:

AMD Turion 64 X2 processors
Intel Core 2 Duo processors

With the possible exception of RAM, your processor is the most important part of your computer with respect to performance. Processors for laptops are designed to consume less energy than their desktop counterparts.

The current top of the line laptop chips are the Intel Core 2 Duo and the AMD Turion 64 X2. Both of these chips are dual-core, which means that it essentially has two processors on the one chip. This results in great performance while multitasking.

AMD Turion 64 processors are comparable to Core Duo processors, although not as popular. Turions with the ML names have lower voltages than MT models, which is preferable, since a lower voltage processor will produce less heat and consume less power.

Intel Celeron, Pentium M, Core Solo, AMD Sempron, and VIA processors are budget lines. These processors are very cheap, but will offer substantially less performance than a Core Duo or Turion processor. Only users who fit into the "Normal" profile should consider these, for any intensive software these processors will be slow.

The Naming Scheme: What Do All These Numbers Mean?

Performance differences between Pentium M's are mainly based on their clock speed, which is measured in gigahertz (GHz) and varies from 1.4 GHz to 2.13 GHz*. Intel has recently departed from the GHz specification in favor of a "we assign this processor a three-digit number that we hope reflects its performance" naming convention. This is how it works:

• All Pentium M processor numbers start with a 7
• The second digit varies from 1 to 7 and reflects the clock speed (the higher the number the higher the clock speed)
• The third digit is either a 0 or a 5. A five denotes an older version of the processor (dubbed "Dothan") that has a 400 MHz Front Side Bus (FSB), while a zero denotes the newer "Sonoma" update that has a 533 Mhz FSB and supports other nifty new things like PCI-Express graphics cards and DDR2 memory (translation: the newer version is slightly more desirable, but it doesn't really matter). Specific name-to-statistics information can be found * http://www.intel.com/products/processor_number/info.htm#pm here*.

For the Core Solo, Core Duo, and Core 2 Duo chips, they are badged as a letter followed by a number.

• The number denotes the overall performance of the chip: the higher, the better.
• The letter denotes the power consumption of the chip. U and L chips consume little power, which means that they output very little heat and will have better battery lives. The T chips use more power. However, this will not have a large effect, as all of these chips are very efficient.

Similarly, performance differences between Turion processors is determined mainly by clock speed. Performance is also affected by cache.

• All Turion processors are badged as either a ML-xx or MT-xx processor. MT processors run at 1.2 Volts, whereas ML processors run at 1.35 Volts. A lower voltage is preferable for a laptop chip, since this results in less heat produced and longer battery life. Thus, the MT processors are slightly better, but it will not make a huge difference.
• The Turion 64 X2 Processors are dual core, and numbered as TL-xx.
• The second part of the name denotes the clock speed and cache of the processor. The higher the number, the higher the overall performance. For example, a MT-30 processor will be faster than a MT-28 processor. This can get confusing because the MT-30 and MT-28 processors have the same clock speed (1.6 GHz, in this case). However, the MT-30 processor has more cache, so it has a higher overall performance.

For Celeron M and Sempron processors, the higher the clock speed the faster the processor will be.

*Don't try to compare the clock speeds of a 1.73 GHz Celeron M with a 3.6 GHz Pentium 4 desktop processor or even a 2.2 GHz Turion and expect to get anything meaningful out of it. While this is usually okay inside a particular family of processors (e.g. between two Celeron M's), cross-family comparison's don't really work since their architectures are wildly different. For example, a 2.0 Ghz Turion 64 is actually faster than a 3.6 GHz Pentium 4 while consuming about 1/10 the power (go figure).

Centrino Technology - What is it and do I need it?

Due to Intel's rather questionable marketing strategies, many people have come to confuse Centrino(TM) Technology with the Pentium M processor, or simply equate it with better performance. In fact, it's mainly just a marketing ploy that requires all laptops sporting the Centrino(TM) sticker to contain certain pieces of hardware, which are (surprise) all made by Intel, and are not necessarily any better than similar parts made by other companies. For example, a Centrino laptop must have an Intel wireless card, while other manufacturers make perfectly good wireless cards. Moral: don't get fooled into paying extra just so you can have a piece of hardware that will make your laptop able to utilize the mostly nebulous "Centrino Technology." More information on the nature of Centrino can be found here.

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System Memory (RAM)

Normal:

1024 MB (1 GB)

Extended:

1024 MB - 2048 MB (1 GB - 2 GB)

Power User:

2048+ MB (2+ GB)

Memory comes in megabytes (MB), and, typically, the more the better. For those who are interested, a better discussion of what RAM actually does for your computer can be found on the RAM page of our computer glossary.

IT IS HIGHLY RECOMMENDED THAT YOU BUY A LAPTOP WITH AT LEAST 1024 MB (1 GB) OF RAM.

Yes, we mean it. Once you run out of RAM, you have to start using virtual memory, which will slow your computer down to a crawl.

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Operating System

Normal:

Windows Vista Home Premium
Windows Vista Business

Extended:

Windows Vista Home Premium
Windows Vista Business

Power User:

Windows Vista Home Premium
Windows Vista Ultimate

In terms of Operating Systems, you will most likely be limited to some edition of Windows Vista. There are 4 available editions: Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, and Ultimate. Home Basic is, as the name suggests, a very stripped down version of Windows without many features for media support, and without extras such as Aero. As such we would recommend you avoid it. (Note: While we recommend against Home Basic, we will support it. If you are buying a computer where you can choose which edition to have installed, we would recommend you choose Home Premium over Home Basic. The price difference is fairly small, and you will almost certainly find the additional features worth the small price premium.) Home Premium improves upon Home Basic, and is somewhat similar to a mix between the old XP Professional and Media Center editions. Vista Business is fairly similar to XP Professional. Vista Ultimate contains all of the features found in any version of Vista, and is for the more serious users. More information on the different versions of Windows Vista

NOTE: Some computers come with the option of having no operating system installed (as a way to decrease cost). While ITS has a site-license for Windows, it only covers machines that at one time had a version of Windows installed. In other words, you have to buy some kind of Windows operating system for your computer, if you wish to use Windows.

What happened to the Media Center Edition?

Microsoft used to offer a version of Windows XP called Media Center Edition, which had added media support for applications in home theater PCs. With the transition to Vista, Home Premium and Ultimate now contains the functionality that used to be in Media Center.

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Hard Drives

Normal:

40 - 60 GB 4200/5400 RPM

Extended:

60 - 80 GB 5400/7200 RPM

Power User:

100GB-200GB 7200 RPM + large (~200GB) external hard drive

Hard drives are permanent storage for all of your data. This is where all of your papers, presentations, music, and digital photos will be stored.

Laptop hard drives typically come in three different speeds: 4200 RPM, 5400 RPM and 7200 RPM. This refers to the rotational speed of the data platters inside the hard drive itself--the faster the speed, the faster data can be transferred on and off them. However, 7200 RPM drives consume more power than their slower cousins, and unless you are going to be moving very large files around with frequency, you probably won't be able to notice a difference between the two. Almost all laptop drives have moved to 5400 RPM or faster, but some manufacturers still sell 4200 RPM drives. These will be very slow to copy to and from, and shouldn't be considered if you will be using anything intensive.

Laptop hard drives have varying capacities, measured in gigabytes (GB). This number typically varies between 40 and 200. Keep in mind that Windows XP by itself takes up about 5 GB. Add in other commonly forgotten things like your browser cache and other random "stuff" that tends to accumulate over time and this number grows to about 10 GB.
Things like Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and PowerPoint presentations take up very little space (my mother's 10-year collection of books, papers, and letters still fails to fill two gigabytes of space on her hard drive). The largest culprits tend to be digital photos, music, games, and movies. Raw digital photos (fresh off your camera) tend to be extremely high quality and run about 700KB - 1.5MB, meaniing you can fit about 20,000 pictures in a 30 GB drive. Music .mp3s tend to run between 3MB and 5MB, so a typical music collection (~2,000 songs) will take up around 10GB. A modern game tends to consume between 2GB and 5GB after install. Movie sizes can vary wildly depending on their resolution quality, but a decently compressed full-length movie tends to run around 1.5GB (an uncompressed full movie can vary between 4 and 8 GB).

External hard drives are becoming very popular for users with laptops and lots of data. External space will be cheaper than internal space, and you can buy an external drive later if you end up needing more space.

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Optical Drive(s)

Normal:

DVD-ROM or CD-RW/DVD combo

Extended:

CD-RW/DVD combo

Power User:

DVD-R/RW burner

Optical drives read (and sometimes write to) optical media, which means CDs and DVDs. Laptops typically offer three different kinds of optical drives:

• DVD-ROM - This drive can read both CDs and DVDs but can't write to either (this process is referred to as "burning" a CD/DVD).
• CD-RW/DVD combo - This drive can read and burn CDs and read from DVDs (but can't burn DVDs).
• DVD-R/RW burner - This drive can read and burn both CDs and DVDs.

If you like to make your own music mixes and burn them to a CD, then you probably want a CD-RW/DVD combo. CDs are also a good way to back up your data, as long as you don't have many gigabytes of it (a CD holds about 700MB-800MB of data). If you are accustomed to making movies, or need to back up large amounts of data, then a DVD burner is for you. Optical drives also tend to have a lot of technical jargon associated with them in reference to their speed and compatibility, such as:

Speed: The speed of a drive reflects both its read and write speed. Almost all optical drives now read CDs at 52x. CD burners typically top out at 24x write speed. DVD drives/burners use the same "x" notation, but on a different scale: most DVD drives burn at 4x, 8x, and 16x. Note that even though these numbers look "smaller," than their CD counterparts, they burn CDs just as fast as the fastest CD burner.

-R vs. -RW: CD- and DVD-Rs can be written to ("burned") only once, while CD- and DVD-RWs can be written to many times (this number varies but approaches 1000 for high-quality media).

+/- compatibility (DVD-R/RW only): DVD-R/RWs come in two flavors: + and - (e.g. DVD+RW vs. DVD-RW). Most DVD burners are +/- compatible, meaning that they can burn both types. The - format is more compatible with more home entertainment (set-top) DVD players than its + cousin.

Double-layer (DVD-R/RW only): A typical DVD can hold about 4.7GB of data. Double-layer (a.k.a. "dual-layer") DVDs can hold almost twice this: about 8.5GB. Many commercial movie DVDs are double-layer. If a DVD-burner is dual-layer compatible then it can burn dual-layer DVD-Rs. Unfortunately, a single DL DVD-R costs about $10, and you will rarely (if ever) find need to burn such a large amount of data onto a single DVD (i.e. it can usually be split up amongst multiple DVDs). In other words, there's no reason to pay premium for this ability.

Thus, an "8x CD/DVD burner (DVD+/-RW) with double-layer write capability" can burn just about anything, including R/RW media, +/- media, and dual-layer media.

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Graphics (card)

Normal:

Any card that uses shared video memory, such as:

• Any Intel graphics.
  
• ATI Radeon Xpress 1250, Radeon Xpress 1100, Radeon Xpress 200M
  
• NVidia GeForce 7000M, GeForce Go 6100, nForce 600M, nForce Go 430
  
  

Introductory cards with dedicated graphics memory, such as:

• ATI Mobility Radeon X1300, Mobility Radeon X800/X700/X600/X300, Mobility Radeon 9800/9700/9600
  
• GeForce FX Go 5700/5200
  

Extended:

Cards with dedicated graphics memory, such as:

• ATI Mobility Radeon X1700/X1600/X1400
  
• NVidia GeForce 8400M, GeForce Go 7600/7400/7300/7200, GeForce Go 6 Series
  

Power User:

• ATI Mobility Radeon HD Series, Mobility Radeon X2300, Mobility Radeon X1900/X1800
  
• NVidia GeForce Go 8800M/8600M, GeForce Go 7900/7800
  

3D Graphics are really the one place where laptops fall far behind their desktop counterparts. Luckily, you won't really notice any difference unless you try to play any 3D games, in which case they either a) won't work at all, or b) will run about as fast as a rheumatic tortoise. Who's chained to the floor. And has no legs. If you really want to be able to play games on your laptop, make sure that it has a discrete graphics "card" -- as opposed to integrated graphics (ala Intel graphics), which is terrible for games. Anything in the Extended or Power User categories will allow you to play 3D games, although maybe not at the same resolution or quality as you might on a desktop.

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Wireless Networking Card (WiFi)

Normal:

802.11b compatible wireless networking card

Extended:

802.11b/g compatible wireless networking card

Power User: (in order of increasing performance)

802.11b/g compatible wireless networking card

If your laptop has a wireless card, then it will be able to connect to the Claremont Colleges CINE wireless network. This means being able to surf the internet from outside your dorm, in the Smith Campus Center patio, in class (woops, did I say that?), and anywhere else the 5Cs have wireless networking available.

802.11a/b/g?! What do all these numbers mean?!

The 802.11 garbage is simply the catchy name of a general industry standard for wireless networking (thank you, engineers). The letter(s) directly following this are the important part.

A wireless networks come in a, b, and g flavors with both g and a supporting transfers up to 54 Mb/second and b supporting transfers up to 11 Mb/second*. b and g networks interoperate, so if you buy a card that supports 802.11g you will be able to connect to 802.11b networks.

The Claremont Colleges wireless network is a b type network (although it has a few isolated g nodes), so you want a network card that supports at least b transfer rates (almost all do). If you feel like it, go ahead and buy a card that also supports g speeds (802.11b/g), but this won't make your transfer speed with CINE any faster.

However, if you want to buy a wireless router of your own that is g compliant, by all means get a g compatible wireless card. Just keep in mind that if anyone with a b card tries to connect to your network, it'll cut your connection speeds down to b level as well (so you might want to password-protect your mini wireless network).

It should probably be noted that if you're just surfing the web, you won't be able to notice a difference between b and g transfers, since you'll never need to receive data at the kind of speeds we're talking about. The only time you should ever notice a difference would be when you downloading huge files off like movies or program installers off the network.

You should not spend extra to buy an 802.11a card unless you know you need it. 802.11a networks are very rare due to their incompatibility with 802.11b/g networks which were available in the market first. Additionally due to some differences in the protocol design 802.11a has shorter range.

Note that the lower-case b stands for mega *bits, not mega bytes. There are 8 bits in a byte, so this equates to 6.75 MB/s and 1.375 MB/s, respectively. This is an old marketing trick to make the numbers seem "larger."

802.11n

There's a new n standard coming out soon that promises faster transfer speeds and greater compatibility with other speed types. In response, some companies are selling "pre-n" wireless cards that claim that they're n-compliant. Unfortunately, the specifics of the n standard haven't been completely nailed down yet, so these cards may or may not actually work with n networks when the standard is actually released. Pre-n cards are pretty rare right now, but don't get confused if you see them being offered.

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Bluetooth

Normal:

User preference

Extended:

User preference

Power User:

User preference

Bluetooth is a technology designed to allow wireless connectivity between two portable devices over relatively short distances. For example, some cell phones come with Bluetooth headsets so that you can put your phone in your pocket, the headset in your ear, and not have to have an annoying wire running between the two. Lots of devices are starting to use Bluetooth connections, the most popular being cell phones, PDAs, PCs, laptops, and digital cameras. It is primarily designed to compete with USB and other short range connection standards, NOT 802.11 wireless networking.

If you have a Bluetooth-enabled PDA or some other device, you may want to consider buying a laptop that supports Bluetooth connections, since this will allow you to transfer files between the two quickly and easily without having to mess with cords. However, if you don't own (or plan to own) any Bluetooth devices, there's no reason to pay for a Bluetooth card.

( More information on Bluetooth)

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Software

Normal:

None: free from Pomona

Extended:

None: free from Pomona

Power User:

None: free from Pomona

Microsoft Office (Word, Powerpoint, Excel, Outlook, etc.) is really expensive. So are firewalls and antivirus programs such as McAfee. Luckily, you can get these programs for free from Pomona! Just note that you won't be able to install these programs until you get to campus. If you are ordering your computer early in the summer and won't be able to live without them until September, you'll need to buy them from the manufacturer.

More information on licensed (i.e. free to students) software can be found here.

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