EDitorial ± 6-Nov-2000

Intel Inside The Home

Computers, eh? A brain the size of a planet inside the box, but not smart enough to prevent a teensy "illegal operation". Stupid things.

There was a time when only the BT geek down the road had a PC at home. Now they're blooming ubiquitous. Everyone's seemingly got to have one, whether to do e-mail, play Blood Match 2, or download altered images of Britney Spears. People used to say, "I'll be able to do my accounts at home". It's been a while since I last heard that old chestnut as an excuse to make that essential purchase.

But if you're buying a machine at home for the first time, or you'd like some pointers for upgrading, where on earth do you start? Well, you could do a lot worse than to consult the latest Which? PC survey. I chanced across it in the local library this lunchtime, and thought you should see it too. Not the complete thing, you understand, but the main points.

It won't tell you whether you really need a 1000MHz graphics cruncher with 256Mb RAM and read-write DVD to do your word processing, but it will give you some names to aim for (and equally importantly, some to avoid).

Man At Keyboard

Better have some apposite words from someone else:

And now I see with eye serene
The very pulse of the machine
— Wordsworth
Can you imagine "I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud" being drafted in Microsoft Word?

If You Take Away With You Nothing Else
Sound words:

  1. you get what you pay for,
  2. don't lose that telephone support number,
  3. and don't forget to save!
Be seeing you!

Ed