{"id":1917,"date":"2010-07-21T00:01:15","date_gmt":"2010-07-21T08:01:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=1917"},"modified":"2010-07-20T10:26:50","modified_gmt":"2010-07-20T18:26:50","slug":"buying-a-new-pc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=1917","title":{"rendered":"Buying a New PC, Part I"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If you want the latest, fastest computer and money is no object, then this blog post isn&#8217;t for you. Similarly, if you&#8217;re content with walking into a big box store and getting a computer that comes in a big box, then this blog post isn&#8217;t for you either.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nThis blog post is for people who want to buy a computer just for them. A custom machine that delivers all the power and resources you need, no more no less, delivered at the perfect cost.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a simple process, an easy thing to do. I once described in my series of books on buying a computer.<\/p>\n<p>The first book was called <em>How to Understand and Buy Computers<\/em>, published back in 1988. It was a companion piece to a course I taught on buying computers.<\/p>\n<p>That book morphed into other titles over the years, including one of my favorite renditions, <em>Buy That Computer!<\/em> It was supposed to be followed by <em>Buy That Car!<\/em> and <em>Buy That Boat!<\/em> and even more <em>Buy That<\/em> titles, but the publisher was more interested in slapping yellow covers on books than publishing anything else.<\/p>\n<p>Eventually the title became <em>Buying A Computer For Dummies<\/em>, and it went through annual updates for several years. The last one was in 2006.<\/p>\n<p>Regardless of the title or advances in technology, the formula for buying a computer to match your needs hasn&#8217;t changed:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Decide what you want the computer to do.<\/li>\n<li>Find the software to fill your needs.<\/li>\n<li>Choose the hardware necessary to run that software.<\/li>\n<li>Shop for service and support.<\/li>\n<li>Buy the computer!<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Too many people just do a bastardization of Step 3: Find hardware. That seems to be their first priority. Then they go out and get some software only to discover that the game needs a better graphics card or that their photo-editing program would like more memory. That&#8217;s bass-ackwards.<\/p>\n<p>Further, too many people cut out service and support. Face it: You&#8217;re getting no computer service from those cheerful people in the red vests at Costco. You don&#8217;t take your computer into WalMart to get it fixed. And forget phoning up Best Buy to ask them how to re-install Microsoft Office.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll review the five steps to buying a computer specifically in Friday&#8217;s blog post.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you want the latest, fastest computer and money is no object, then this blog post isn&#8217;t for you. Similarly, if you&#8217;re content with walking into a big box store and getting a computer that comes in a big box, then this blog post isn&#8217;t for you either.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1917"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1917\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1922,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1917\/revisions\/1922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}