Buying a new computer
by Chris Woodford. Last updated: July 27, 2022.
Buying yourself a new computer can be a daunting prospect. There are literally hundreds of different models to choose from and, what's worse, they all look exactly the same! Compare the specifications and you'll find that looks aren't the only thing they have in common: unless you know your Wi-Fi from your Bluetooth and your Linux from your Windows, you'll be hard-pressed to tell one machine from another. It's hardly surprising that most computer buyers make a few feeble attempts to compare a handful of likely contenders and then just pick something more or less at random based on whichever brand sounds most familiar. But isn't there a more scientific approach to parting with your hard-earned cash? The best thing you can do is make a list of all the features that really matter to you, make a shortlist of half a dozen different machines, and then see which machine ticks the most boxes. But whether you go for the scientific approach or just trust your gut, here are some things to think about before you fill your shopping cart and click "checkout."
Photo: How much computer can you get for your money? Desktop or laptop? Laptops are more convenient than desktops if you don't have a lot of room, and use less energy, but they're easier to damage, harder to upgrade, and cost more to repair.
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Contents
What will you use it for?
This is absolutely the most important question when it comes to buying a new computer. Most home users do little more than browse the Web, send emails, word-process the occasional letter, download MP3 music tracks, and store and process photographs from a digital camera. For basic Internet (email and Web) work and word processing, all you need is a basic computer—you don't need anything fancy and you certainly don't need to worry about getting the very latest model. Processor speeds and drive sizes are virtually irrelevant if you'll do nothing but Web browsing and sending emails; even a 10-year-old secondhand laptop may be good enough (though it might struggle to run the latest version of Windows).
If you'll be using your computer to manage music tracks on an iPod (or other MP3 player), the most important thing you need is plenty of disk space—but virtually any new computer will have more than you could possibly need. Once, we would have talked about making sure you had a big enough "hard drive," but many computers now use SSDs (solid-state drives, essentially flash memory chips) instead of old-style magnetic disks. (As a general rule of thumb, I suggest multiply your iPod's storage capacity by 2–3 and aim for a drive that size to ensure you have plenty of room for other things.) When it comes to storing videos and digital photographs, storage is rather more of an issue. But even if you buy a computer with a hard disk that turns out to be too small, you can easily add an external drive at relatively low cost to overcome the problem. Alternatively, you can now buy USB flash memory sticks that have as much memory as an average PC had just a few years ago—and they make great portable backups. And you can always use cloud storage (storing your stuff on a third-party service like Google Drive, Amazon Drive, Dropbox, or similar) instead of keeping your files locally.
In short, as far as most home users are concerned, virtually any new off-the-shelf computer will be able to handle what you want to do. The only exception is people who like to play games (either alone or online). If you plan to do a lot of that, you'll need a computer with a fast processor—and the processor speed will probably override all other considerations. If you're a games player, always buy the fastest machine (the one with the highest processor speed) you can afford.
Laptop, desktop... phone or tablet?
Photo: Do you even need a computer anymore? Most modern websites—including this one—are specifically designed to show optimized mobile versions on smartphones, like this large-screen, high-definition Android "phablet" (a cross between a phone and a tablet).
Laptop computers have become ubiquitous since the mid-1990s. They're brilliant for moving around the house from room to room (sending emails in bed, working in the garden, or wherever you happen to be), especially now wireless Internet access means you can be online at all times without worrying about cables. But there are two key things to remember before you dismiss a desktop out of hand:
- Laptops are guaranteed to make themselves obsolete every three or four years. Unlike desktop computers, you can't easily upgrade components when you outgrow them or replace them when they fail. You can add more memory easily enough (though there's usually a limit to how much), but you can't add a bigger screen or a new hard drive without quite a lot of hassle.
- Laptops are much more flimsy (less robust) than desktop machines—ironic, given how they have to put up with more abuse—and expensive to get repaired. In particular, the keyboards on laptop computers are not designed for industrial-strength daily use. You'll soon wear out a laptop's keyboard if you pound it heavily for 8 hours a day and you'll find the cost of replacing it can be about 20–25 percent the cost of a new machine! If, like me, you spend your entire life typing, and you prefer to use a laptop, the best thing to do is to invest in an external USB keyboard (maybe a wireless Bluetooth one for convenience). Plug it into your laptop and use it every time you do a lot of typing. If you spill coffee on an external keyboard or wear it out, it's a mere $10 for a new one; ruin your laptop's built-in keyboard and you could face a bill of $200 or more. If you find an external keyboard means you have to sit too far from the screen to read it properly, buy yourself a stand for the laptop and put the keyboard just underneath it (or use a couple of telephone directories). If you get a small external keyboard, you might find it will perch snugly on top of your laptop's existing keyboard without causing any problems.
Even if you always use your laptop in the same room in your home (mine is permanently sitting on a desk plugged into a printer, external keyboard, and so on), that doesn't necessarily mean a desktop is a better bet. I often work away from home so it's brilliant to be able to unplug the laptop in a couple of minutes and take it with me; I couldn't do that with a desktop. On the other hand, if you organize your files sensibly, you can probably just copy your entire "My documents" folder onto a USB stick and take that with you, and if you use a web-based email service like Gmail or Yahoo!, you don't need to take your laptop with you at all.
On the positive side, laptops use much less energy than desktops, so switching to a laptop is a sensible decision if you care about the planet. According to the EU's Energy Star energy-efficiency labeling scheme, a laptop uses just 50–80 percent of the energy you'd use with a desktop—savings that will really mount up if you use your machine perhaps 8–10 hours a day, 365 days a year, for several years.
A few years ago, all you had to choose between was a laptop and a desktop. Now there are all kinds of mobile devices too—and fast mobile broadband makes it possible to do things online on a mobile almost as quickly as you can on a desktop. If you do a lot of online reading but not a lot of typing, you might find a tablet serves you better than a laptop—and an ebook reader (such as a Kindle) could be even better, since it's likely to have very long battery life. Conversely, if you like to work in all kinds of places around your home and you do type a lot, a tablet might be too annoying (though you can add separate Bluetooth keyboards to many of them, effectively turning them into laptops). If all you want to do is check your emails on the move, do you even need a tablet? Maybe you'd be better off with a high-spec smartphone—particularly the kind of large-screen phone sometimes referred to as a "phablet" (because it's, in effect, half-phone, half-tablet).
The bottom line is that it pays to give some thought to how, where, and when you'll use a computer before you buy it.
CD or DVD?
Most laptops now come with a multi-function audio CD-player, CD-ROM drive, CD rewriter, DVD, and DVD rewriter—so you don't have to worry too much about this. (You can always add an external USB CD or DVD drive if you need to do.) The appearance of Blu-ray drives adds a new complication, but don't worry about them too much unless you're a games player. Most of us can cope with a standard CD/DVD reader and rewriter, which will come with most new desktops and laptops. Compact discs and DVDs are going to be around for a while yet, even though, for a lot of us, it's all about downloading and streaming now.
Photo: CD/DVD players are much less important than they used to be, but you might still find one handy if you like using your laptop as a portable movie player.
Widescreen?
One area where laptops, in particular, have changed considerably over the last couple of decades is in the size of their LCD screens and their aspect ratio. Older laptops had much squarer screens; the latest laptops have widescreens so you can watch movies from DVDs or streamed online. Don't worry too much about screen dimensions unless you plan to watch plenty of movies on your computer. But if you're planning to do lots of Web work and you're buying a small computer with a tiny screen, bear in mind that many, wider websites will display with scroll bars (only showing part of the screen at a time)—and that can get a bit irritating after a while.
Photo: My last four (Toshiba Satellite Pro) laptops. The 1996 model on the left has a tiny screen and a really chunky (but amazingly robust) case with built-in power supply. This machine was literally built like a tank! Second along, we have a low-cost Toshiba from 2004. It has a much bigger screen and a huge touchpad and wrist-wrest. The case is also much thinner, but flimsier too. The 2007 model, third from left, is clearly designed to double as a DVD player. It has a widescreen display and the keyboard wrist area is much smaller. On the extreme right, the machine I use now, built in 2020, has an even wider screen, thinner body, and no hard drive: it uses SSD storage (flash memory). Note that the photos are not taken to the same scale.
Connectivity?
Computers used to be solitary machines you used in the comfort of your own home without worrying about other people; now, thanks to the Internet, and things like Facebook and Twitter, they're a much more social phenomenon than anyone ever expected: 21st-century home computers are more like super-enhanced versions of 20th-century telephones. That's why most computer users now expect their machines to be online the whole time. If you're buying a laptop, and especially if you're getting an older model secondhand, make sure it has a wireless networking (Wi-Fi) card built in so you can use it all around your home (you will need to buy a separate wireless broadband modem/router or a mobile broadband dongle as well). Some ancient laptops still have built-in dial-up modems, but they're much less useful than they were; it's virtually impossible to use the web without broadband these days because most websites are deliberately designed to make use of faster connections.
Photo: If you buy a secondhand laptop and it doesn't have a built-in Wi-Fi card, you can always buy a PCMCIA adapter card (made by companies such as Netgear and Belkin). It's a bit bigger than a credit card and it just slots into the side of the machine. If you're using Windows, the card should install itself automatically. You can buy these cards amazingly cheaply on auction sites.
Buying secondhand
Ten years ago, the smartest way to buy a laptop was to get a two or three year-old secondhand machine at a fraction of the cost of a new model. Having spent a bit of time looking at prices on eBay, I get a sense that you can currently buy a 2–5 year-old secondhand laptop for about a half to a third the price of a new one. Bear in mind the drawbacks of going the secondhand route: you can spend an inordinate amount of time on auction websites checking out the features of secondhand machines and worrying about whether they're still up-to-date enough for your needs, the reliability of the seller, whether the machine is stolen, and all kinds of other things as well. A few years ago, I would have advised students and people on low budgets definitely to buy secondhand; now, it's harder to see a justification for buying secondhand unless you're really pushed for cash. If you're environmentally minded and interested in recycling, it's relatively easy to find refurbished, ex-corporate machines on eBay; you might not save that much on buying a new model, but you'll have the satisfaction that you've saved one more machine from a landfill in India. Laptops are high on the list of items when it comes to auction fraud, so make sure you buy secondhand machines from reputable sources (ex-demo or reconditioned models are sometimes available from official dealers). Some of the big manufacturers have outlets for selling their own refurbished machines; some of the big online stores (including Amazon) also offer refurbished machines with short warranties.
One of your worries about buying secondhand may be that an older machine won't be able to run the latest version of Windows. It's important to get this clear before you buy. If you purchase something old, can you update to Windows 10 without making the machine so slow that it will no longer be day-to-day practical? On the other hand, if you're a little bit technically adept (or willing to try your luck), you can turn this issue to your advantage: a lot of people get rid of fairly new machines because they're no longer the latest thing or they can't be bothered to update the operating system. Even if you can't run the latest Windows, you will almost certainly be able to run Linux (and the more trimmed-down Linux versions or "distros," such as antiX and Puppy, will even run happily on ancient, 32-bit, 256MB Windows-XP era laptops dating from the early 2000s). So installing Linux on an older secondhand laptop (or getting a friend to do that for you) is a great way to get a decent machine in a very affordable way (or to stop an older machine going to landfill, if you're conscious about issues like that).
