Posts Tagged ‘Consumer’
Consumer Reports – Desktop Computers
Thursday, March 4, 2010 6:30 No Comments
The desktop computer has become just another appliance you use every day. Replacement sales–not first-time purchases–now drive the computer market. Fully loaded desktops selling for less than $800 are common, even among established brands.
WHAT’S AVAILABLE
There are dozens of companies vying to put a new desktop in your home. Dell, eMachines, Gateway, Hewlett-Packard (which merged with Compaq in 2002), IBM, and Sony all make machines that use Microsoft’s dominant Windows operating system. eMachines, recently merged with Gateway, specializes in budget-priced Windows models. Apple is the sole maker of Macintosh models. Small mail-order and store brands cater to budget-minded buyers.
Price range: $400 to $3,000.
IMPORTANT FEATURES
The processor houses the “brains” of a computer. Its clock speed, measured in gigahertz (GHz), determines how fast the chip can process information. In general, the higher the clock speed, the faster the computer. But not always, since different chip families attain different efficiencies. Manufacturers of Windows machines generally use 1.6- to 3.8-GHz processors with one of the following names: Intel’s Pentium or Celeron, or AMD’s Athlon or Sempron. Celeron and Sempron are lower-priced processors that equal higher-priced chips in many respects. Intel now assigns “processor numbers” to its chips, de-emphasizing clock speed. Apple’s Macintosh machines use 1.25- to 2.5-GHz PowerPC G4 or G5 processors, which are manufactured by IBM. Apple has announced that they will begin a transition to Intel processors in 2006.The system architecture of some families of chips allows them to be as fast as or faster than others with higher clock speeds, so speed comparison by the numbers can be misleading.
