Realistically comparing computers... on your own!

When it comes to comparing computers, it's gotten ridiculous.

You've got tons of different numbers and phrases being thrown at you, yet none of them are really making sense. That's why we've made this! The computer buyer's guide to computer specifications, or "specs," and what they mean. There's an insane amount of computer jargon out there, so we're going to go over some really important ones right now.

GHz

This is usually used in respect with the computer's speed, also referred to as Gigahertz. Speed and size with computers are actually based on the Greek measurement system, such as kilo, mega, giga, etc. So a gigahertz is actually a billion hertz, but that beckons the question, what exactly is a hertz? Well, that's actually one little charge going through the "brain" of the computer, otherwise known as the processor. Since computers can't measure different levels of charges very well, there's two different kinds of charges in computers. On, which is represented as a 1 in the computer, and off, which is represented by a 0. So a gigahertz processor can go through a billion 0's and 1's in a second! 

You usually want around 2 GHz or more and at least a dual-core. "Wait a sec, what's this dual-core bull?" I can hear everyone reading this saying that already. Well, the number of cores is the number of "brains" you have in your computer, so a dual-core can handle two major tasks at once! Quad-core can handle four, so on and so forth. Like I said earlier though, dual-core is probably the best way to go for the budget-minded computer user.

GB / TB

These usually refer to the hard drive space or memory, and both are really important. The hard drive stores all your videos and pictures, as well as any music or documents you accumulate over the life of your computer. The memory is basically what is sounds like, it stores the things you're actively using, like programs, documents, games, what have you. So the more of both you have, the better, especially memory. The more memory you have the more you can do at once without slowing down your computer. You want at least 4 or 6 gigabytes of memory or more and then about 500 gigabytes of hard drive space, but 1 terabyte is suggested very strongly. A single gigabyte is equal to 1,024 characters. For very lengthy reasons that I really don't want to go over, a gigabyte in space is just equal to 1,024 bytes, or characters. Sounds like a lot, huh? Well it's really not, because Windows 8 takes up 20 gigabytes of hard drive and 2 gigabytes of memory to run like a slug. You definitely do not want just 2 gigabytes of memory even if all you're doing is typing documents, the lag between typing and the text appearing will drive you nuts

So I guess a basic rule of thumb is the more, the better.What anyone will want to comfortably work or play facebook games as well as some less demanding games like Minecraft, is probably a dual-core 2.4 GHZ, 500 GB hard drive, 4 GB of DDR3 RAM (a.k.a. memory) and at least 1 GB memory for the graphics. This should be good enough for anyone to use a computer comfortably and without being held back by the computer lacking in any area.

Well, that's my post! Sorry it's a day late, I've been at the hospital with my wife a lot lately. By my next post, I'll introduce all of you to the new addition to the B.T.I. family! Anyways, I always like doing these posts because of some reason that I can't really decide right now, but that's all folks!

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