My 14-year-old son keeps telling me that for his first car he wants to buy an old car and fix it up. I keep telling him that it is just not practical to take an old clunker and put a lot of time and money into it when you can buy a much newer one with a lot less hassle. Much is the same with computers. Many experts say that after 3 years a computer has lived out its design life, meaning that technology has left it behind and it doesn't have what some of the new software requires. If you find yourself putting money into parts and labor to fix or upgrade you computer it is probably time to start thinking about a replacement.

With the Internet there are so many options when it comes to shopping for a new computer these days. Don't let information overload make it harder than it has to be. After you have made the decision to buy you need to decide what you are going to use this computer for and how much you are willing to spend. Think about things such as space requirements. Is your space confined to the point where you need to consider a flat panel LCD monitor? Do you want to do tasks such as video editing or online gaming? Nowadays you can find computers that are built especially for gaming, video or graphic editing and other high-end applications. Of course you will pay more but that's the price of customization. You may notice that some manufacturers are building systems without floppy disk drives any more. If you have some precious data that is only on floppy right now you should look at copying it to a CD or DVD before it takes the road of the old Betamax movies. One common theory in computer buying is to buy on the edge of technology. The idea is that your computer will not be outdated as quick as if you buy a slightly less advanced system. Do your research when it comes to extra bells and whistles. I wanted to give myself a nice Christmas present last year so I built myself what I thought was a nice machine. While I am still very satisfied with the system, if I had it to do all over again, I probably would have sprung for the DVD recorder that does both the + and - formats. I really thought the - format was going to rule. I will get into that a little later in this article.

The numbers game - 800 MHz front side bus, Level 2 Cache, 8X AGP, DDR 333, it sounds confusing but don't let it get you down. There are really only 3 figures that you need to be concerned with. Let's run them down and get you familiarized with them:

Processor speed
This is the number that tells how fast your computer runs, also referred to as clock speed. You might compare a top of the line processor such as the Pentium 4, 3.2 GHz to a Hemi engine: top of the line. There are basically two makes of processors, AMD and Intel. Besides its flagship Pentium 4 processor, Intel also makes a Celeron processor, which you will find to be a few hundred dollars cheaper. AMD has an answer to the Celeron with its Duron processor. Either of these processors will do most folks fine but are considered to be less robust than their flagship processors. An AMD's rating of 2400 is compared to Intel's 2 GHz. If you are purchasing a notebook computer, look for the Pentium M processor built on Intel's Centrino technology. These processors are built specifically for notebooks to offer enhanced performance and added features such as built in wireless support.

Random Access Memory (RAM)
You can think of RAM as the carburetor on your Hemi, and the more fuel that you can pump through it the better. Basically, this is what your programs use to run. The more RAM you have the more programs you can run more efficiently. You'll be hard pressed to find a system with less than 256 these days, which is plenty for most mainstream computing.

Hard drive
Staying with the automobile analogy, this is your seating capacity or your storage area - how much junk you can put in the trunk depends on the size of your hard drive. Forty Gigabytes (GB) is about the smallest they come in as of this writing and is good unless you are a big gamer or plan on doing a lot of video editing. I have fitted many folks with computers and do a lot of computing myself. I use mine to store some music, produce web pages; I have a nice sized genealogy file and plenty of digital camera pictures and many applications on my system and still have room on my 40-gigabyte hard drive. Many folks confuse hard drive space with RAM, however they are 2 entirely different items.

So when somebody asks you what kind of computer you got yourself for Christmas don't just say a Dell, HP or whatever brand it is, say you got a Pentium 4, 2.8 Gigahertz processor, with 256 megabyte of RAM and a 80 Gigabyte hard drive.

The following is a breakdown of specifications that I recommend for 4 different classes of computers and a notebook.

   Economy Box     2 GHz processor, 256 MB RAM,
                   40 GB hard drive. 
                   Good enough to get you by without 
                   taking out a second mortgage.

   Hot Rod         2.6 GHz processor, 512 MB Ram,
                   80+ GB hard drive.  
                   Great for high speed computing.

   God Box         3.2 GHz processor, 1 GB RAM,
                   120 GB hard drive.  
                   Good for running a small island nation.

   Mobile laptop   1.6 GHz Pentium M processor, 256 GB RAM,
                   30 GB hard drive.

PC World.com has a nice section entitled product guide, which is updated once a month. Under the desktop section they have four different subsections entitled Desktop PCs, Entertainment PCs, Corporate PCs and PCs under $900. Standard features on computers are always changing. Nowadays, a Rewritable DVD is standard on most systems so you can count on a Network card for your broadband connection, USB 2.0 ports and anything else you would need for everyday computing and then some. If you are really looking for a bargain and are an adventurous type of person you might want to take a look at a new system on the market called the KooBox (www.koobox.com) It goes for $449.00 and comes with a flat screen LCD monitor, 1.2 GHz Celeron processor, 256 MB RAM, 40 GB hard drive. If you decide to pick this little gem up you will have to say goodbye to all of your Windows software though. The KooBox is made by Lindows.com and will only run Linux software.

Media center or entertainment PCs is something new to the personal computing scene. Generally speaking, these are computers made to combine your home entertainment and general computer needs. Computing power is excellent for enhancement of your entertainment experience, as Microsoft puts it. They are equipped with mid to high-end processors, plenty of memory, high-capacity hard disks, CD-ROM/DVD drives, advanced graphics and audio capabilities, and networking connectivity.

DVD R formats
If you are looking to get confused when shopping for a computer this ought to do it. As I mentioned earlier, there is still somewhat of an ongoing battle concerning DVD recorder formats. While there is no clear winner yet, manufactures have made buying simpler by offering more DVD recorders that will read, write and record both the +R and -R formats.

One factor to consider when buying a new computer used to be what kind of backup device to purchase with it. The days of Zip disks are gone with the commonality of the CD R/W. You won't find a computer sold these days without at least a CD-R/W or combination DVD R/CD RW drive. CD Rs hold 700+ megabytes of data and DVDs hold 4.7 Gigabytes. With Windows XP, it can be as easy and using Windows Explorer or My Computer to backup your data.

If you are going to visit your local retail store there are a couple of things to look out for. Retail stores don't make a big profit off of the computer systems that they sell; it is the extras that they try and sell you with the computer that brings in the money for them. It usually starts off something like "How do you connect to the Internet Mr. Jones? And from there they try to sign you up for several different Internet providers, sell you 4 reams of printing paper, and USB cables made of enriched uranium. My advice is to go into the store armed with a little knowledge about what you want and a little resistance towards the sales person, while being courteous of course. In this day and age, many so called prepackaged systems that you see in the Sunday paper ads come with a monitor and printer. These systems are priced to move and are all you need to get up and running. All you should need to buy to set the prepackaged systems up is a USB cable for the printer and these generally run about $15 - $25.

If you are avoiding the traffic and doing your shopping online you will have a never-ending supply of sources to choose from. Some of the major manufacturers such as Dell only sell online. It is quit simple to order a computer on the Internet and most sites give you the option of customizing your system in the comfort of your own living room. The only downside to ordering your computer on the Internet is waiting for it to be delivered. I generally steer away from any extended warranties. My reasoning behind that is because in most cases computer problems are the result of software issues, i.e., operating system malfunctions, corrupt software, or viruses, all of which are not covered by manufacturer or store warranties. Most manufacturer warranties are usually good on parts and labor for up to 3 years. You might be asked 3 times on the way to the cash register and then again at the register if you want the extended service warranty. If you do any upgrading such as adding RAM or add an extra hard drive you may void the warranty. Finally, think hard before spending hundreds of dollars on an extended warranty or service contract. If trouble does occur, especially on a machine more than three years old, it is usually better to replace the computer than to repair it.

If you are going to have someone build you a computer make sure that they will stand behind their work, ask for a printed warranty. Too many times I find that Mr. and Mrs. Jones had Mr. X from down around the corner build the computer but he is not around to answer any questions or do any troubleshooting. Contrary to belief, building a computer is not as simple as screwing parts inside a box and plugging in some wires. Many of the problems that I see on systems that were built by Mr. X were due to hardware compatibility issues, poor workmanship, i.e., wires daggling and getting caught in a fan or improper operating system installations. That's not to say that Mr. X can't build a good computer but for the money you can't beat the mass-producing companies so unless you have special needs and just have to have the latest, greatest components before they come out on the market, stick with a name brand.

Generally speaking unless you are regularly doing video editing, using your computer to store massive amounts of files/data or plan to install a lot of the latest and greatest games, or like to tweak your computer a lot, the economy box will do you fine for years to come. Computer manufactures have been producing more than what the average computer user needs for some time.

Now you're ready to go shopping, so make your list and check it twice and get what you can for a good price.

Happy Holidays and happy computer shopping.