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Some time ago I wrote a very basic PC buying guide, granted it was Windows based only but seeing how they have the majority market share I thought it appropriate. But what if you’re still kinda confused? Well follows is a list of 3 recommended PCs, pictures are a representation and may differ to actual product.

Best budget PC

This is one if you just want to skim the net, use your MP3 player and upload photos to Facebook e.t.c. it’s nothing flash but only carrying a £180 (best Price) price tag. Here’s the spec:

Acer Aspire Revo R3600 Mini PC, Intel Atom 1.6Ghz Processor, 160Gb Hard Disk, 2Gb Ram, Wireless LAN, NVidia Ion Graphics, 4-in-1 Card Reader, Keyboard & Mouse, Windows Vista Home Premium, Fast Ethernet, No Optical Drive or Modem, 6 x 4-pin Type A USB 2.0 – USB, 1 x 15-pin HD-15 VGA, 1 x HDMI Digital Audio/Video, 1 x eSATA, Mini-phone Headphone, Mini-phone Microphone, Mounts on your desk or fits to the back of your monitor via the VESA mounting holes. Granted you’d have to buy a separate CD/DVD drive but you can pick one up for £35. You would also need a monitor OR plug it directly into your flat panel TV either way a cracking entry level PC for around £300 all in. A slightly ‘punchier’ model can be found here

Mid range enthusiasts system

One of the funkiest PC’s I’ve seen in a while (that won’t break the bank) is the range of Touchsmart PC’s from Hewlett Packard. It has a 22” touch screen ‘all in one’ style setup so it’s not near as bulky and cumbersome as a standard style desktop plus the added ‘family fun’ of not having to use the mouse. There are various models but I think this one is one of the best all rounders. A PC like this will set you back around £1,124 (best price). Spec. as follows.

Intel Core2 Duo P7450 Processor, 4GB DDR2 Memory, 1TB Hard Drive, DVDRW Drive, NVidia GeForce 9900M Graphics, 22″ Touch-Enabled LCD Screen, Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit, Touch-enabled 22″ diagonal widescreen BrightView LCD with tilt adjustment (10 to 40 degrees). resolution: 1680×1050, Communication Ethernet 10/100/1000BT integrated network interface, LAN 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth® wireless networking 2.0 EDR, TV (analogue and DVB-T) tuner card, High Performance 2.0 speakers, High Definition Audio 5.1 (via digital output) front headphone port, front audio line in port, rear audio line out port, rear digital audio out port, Wireless keyboard with hide-away bay and numeric keypad, wireless optical mouse. Integrated VGA webcam with built-in microphone with HP Vista Media Center Remote Control. Find HP’s Touchsmarts here

If money were no object

This is, in my opinion, the pinnacle of PC’s – the cream of the crop if you will. This PC will set you back a cool £4,338.01 but the spec speaks for itself.

Alienware Area 51ALX Black Anodized Premium Desktop Chassis, Intel Core i7 processor 950 (3.06Ghz, 8MB L2 cache, 4.8GT/sec), Genuine Windows® 7 Ultimate 64bit- English, 3 years Next Business Day service + 3 years Accidental Damage Support (paying 4k I’m dam sure I’m going to have accidental cover!), 23in SP2309W Full HD+ Widescreen Black UK/Irish (2048 x 1152), 6GB 1600MHz (3×2GB) Tri Channel Memory, 1.2 TB (2x 640 GB) Serial ATA (7200 Rpm) Dual HDD Config Raid 0 Stripe, DUAL SLI™ 1.8GB NVIDIA® GeForce™ GTX295 graphics card, Alienware TactX™ Surround sound headset (with microphone), Alienware TactX™ Keyboard – UK QWERTY, Alienware TactX™ Mouse, Blu-Ray RW (Blu-ray, DVD, CD read & write), SoundBlaster XFi Titanium PCIe card.

Quite a beast I think you’ll agree, if you do have a bunch of cash lying around buy one from here

So you’re looking to buy a new PC but worried about what a CPU is or how much RAM you’ll need? Well I’m going to try and break it down for you into more friendly terms. I feel that a lot of high street stores try to squeeze every last penny out of people in order for their figures to look good

“…would you like an extended warranty with that sir…”

“…not really I live alone and the laptop will never leave the house, it’s simply a replacement for my current desktop that I’ve had for 4 years…”

“…but what if you were to spill a drink on it sir or to leave a pen on the keyboard and shut the lid…”

“…sigh, please let me just buy it and be on my way…”

We’ve all been there right? So what do you need to know when buying a PC? Well first of all I’d start by looking at the CPU (central processing unit) or processor for short. This is kind of the brain of the unit! The speed of this device is measured in gigahertz or GHz for short. The best way to determine if the processor will be fast or not is simple;  the higher the gigahertz the faster the ‘brain’ will function. A lot of processors out there have something called ‘Dual Core’, ‘Triple Core’ or even ‘Quad Core’.  This is easiest explained as the amount of processors inside the CPU and each ‘Core’ will have a gigahertz rating and again the higher the number the faster it will be.  Allow me to provide an example:    An Intel Pentium Dual Core processor, model number E2220, has 2 processors each with a 2.4GHz (2×2.4GHz) rating where as an E8400 model has 2 processors each with a 3.0GHz (2×3.0GHz) rating, so looking at the figures the E8400 model will be considerably quicker. Simple! Then just apply that to the 3 and 4 processor model. As a side note I think I should mention that a ‘Quad Core’ processor each with a core speed of 2.33GHz will be much quicker than the E8400 example as it has 4×2.33GHz processors – common sense I know, I just wanted to make sure you were still with me and didn’t have a nosebleed!  There’s no point in going for a superfast CPU if all you want to do is use the internet and use Microsoft Office. If you’re not doing anything that requires a lot of ‘umph’ so to speak, which is normally anything heavily graphics based like gaming or photo/video editing, then a low GHz processor will be just fine – use this general rule of thumb with all PC hardware. Applying this principle means you can now get good entry level laptops for £400 which would be more than adequate for general all round use. A smart shopper may even find something for the £300 mark – but just remember entry level laptops are exactly that and the higher the numbers the higher the price – but the faster it will go.

The next thing I would consider is the RAM (random-access memory). Take this to be the heart of the PC. There are quite a few different types of RAM on the market – some now more used than others.  The key thing about RAM is that it is measured in megabytes and gigabytes so again the higher the number the quicker it will be. We used to buy RAM in lots of different sizes but nowadays the most common form is 1 Gigabyte sticks so again the higher the gigabytes of memory the faster it will perform. You may see some computers displaying 512 megabytes of RAM; this is where it can get a little confusing – a ‘Gigabyte’ is more than a ‘Megabyte’ and without printing a list of exactly what the numbers refer to this is the simplest way to explain it.  I  don’t want you falling asleep now… A computer with 2 Gigabytes of memory is about average these days, 4 Gigabytes of memory will mean your computer will run nice and quick (as long as you’ve read about CPU’s). You can go above 4 Gigabytes but your PC may not be able to use it all, dependant on which Operating System you have but that’s a whole other conversation.

As I mentioned earlier if you’re not doing anything intense that’s all you need to know! The rest is just common sense – I mean you must know yourself what you’d like to use it for. If you’re into your photography maybe it should have a card reader but just make sure it will read the particular card that goes into your camera. Maybe you’d like the ability to plug your laptop into a flat panel (LCD) TV so make sure it has the correct connectors both on the TV and on the laptop – usually a VGA (video graphics array) or a HDMI (high definition multimedia interface).

If you’d like to know about other hardware devices i.e. graphics cards & sound cards etc there will be more overviews to follow.