I’VE BEEN USING COMPUTERS for a long time – I bought my first Sinclair Spectrum in 1979 – so people think I know a lot about computers. I don’t. But I do know quite a lot about using them.
When people ask me which computer they should buy, I always ask the same question: ‘What do you want to do with it?’.
They think I’m being facetious, but I’m really not. Imagine you were to ask someone which boat they’d recommend. It’s reasonable to ask: do you want to cross the Channel? Or the Atlantic? Or just row up the river to the pub?
It’s the same with computers. If all you want to do is web browsing, some word processing and maybe the odd spreadsheet, then you can ignore the salesman and just buy whatever’s fairly cheap that you like the look of. It will also let you design websites, do your taxes, and edit your holiday snaps.
It’s only if you want to do video editing, or high-end photo manipulation, or gaming, that you’ll need a more powerful machine. Gaming, of course, requires more processing power than just about everything else. And by ‘gaming’ I don’t mean Candy Crush and Tetris: those will work fine whatever computer you get.
See also: Desktop or laptop?, Why buy a Mac?
