After your first computer purchase, the next purchase involves less stuff. That’s because you can keep your monitor, keep the keyboard, keep the mouse, keep lots of stuff. The lifespan on those items is far greater than the computer console itself. The exception? Headsets.

When it comes to hearing sound on a PC, you have three options:

• Use the PC’s internal speaker, which is weak and generally sucks.
• Use external speakers, which is fine when you live alone in an isolated spot somewhere in the mountains.
• Use headsets and potentially win a Nobel Prize for keeping the peace in your home as well as on your block.

My opinion is that headsets for a PC are a must. Unless you dwell in your mother’s basement and she doesn’t mind the 6-channel surround sound feeling of playing Battlefield all night, headsets are the way to go.

Headsets include stereo speakers, conveniently one for each ear. If you pay more, you can get headsets that simulate surround sound. That’s pretty cool.

By the way, headsets include a microphone. Headphones do not. The microphone is a must, not only for chatting with teammates while playing online games, but for using Skype and other voice-input activities.

Some of the spendy headsets require high-end PC audio hardware to connect. Those are the 6-channel headsets. Otherwise, headsets plug into the computer’s Speaker and Microphone jacks. Some use the USB jack. And getting headsets that have nice, comfortable ear cans is good. A long cable is a plus.

The only problem with computer headsets is that you will, someday, drop them on the ground and they’ll break.

Cheap headsets break all the time. Expensive headsets break as well, but they also break your heart because you perhaps paid over $100 for them.

I know that very expensive headsets exist, say in the $400 range. Perhaps that high price infuses enough fear to keep the users from dropping the headsets, but I assume that they’ll break as well.

For the past two years, I’ve been lucky. I have a set of Razer headsets, shown in Figure 1. I’ve dropped them probably hundreds of times. Yet they haven’t been broken. That’s because the headsets use wires to connect the cans. Other headsets — even my son’s expensive gaming headphones — are plastic. They break inevitably.

Figure 1. My favorite Razer headsets, going on 2 years.

So my advice is this: Get yourself a good pair of headsets. Ensure that they have nice comfortable cans and that the top of the headset doesn’t irritate your head. Confirm that the headsets have sturdy connectors, so that when dropped the cans won’t snap off. If so, you and your computer headset are set.