Home Business

It's all too easy to buy the wrong computer. A lot of people end up buying something unnecessarily expensive but they don't really need, while some others try to buy the cheapest computer that can, only to have to upgrade within just a few months.

You don't want to find out that your three months old computer is too slow to run the software you need it to run, or that you just spent $400 for a game graphics card that you'll never use.

When you buy a computer, don't buy uninformed. Hopefully we can help you determine exactly what to look for when buying a new computer.

When it comes to the computer’s CPU, there’s really only two choices: AMD and Intel. You may be familiar with the Pentium name. That’s a popular line of CPUs made by Intel. AMD's equivalent CPU would be the Athlon.

We’re assuming that you are you going to use the computer to run your home business, and not to play games. In order to run the latest games, you really need to buy a top-of-the-line computer. However, to run a business, you don't need the fastest CPU or most expensive graphics card.

A good midrange computer is all you really need. Any CPU faster than a Pentium 4 3Ghz or an AMD Athlon 64 3000+ should serve you nicely.  Faster CPUs quickly increase the cost of the computer, without much added benefit to the home business user.

If you're not building your computer yourself, you don't really have to worry about the motherboard. Just make sure it has enough expansion slots if you want to upgrade your computer's capabilities later.

Many computer manufacturers cut costs by integrating the graphics card into the motherboard. While this greatly reduces graphics performance, the average business user won't be affected much. Still, you might want to get computer with a separate graphics card if it doesn't cost much extra.

Graphics cards generally come in two varieties, AGP and PCI-Express. AGP is an older technology that’s slowly being phased out, but it's still perfectly fine for business use. As a business user, you don’t have to spend extra to get a PCI-Express graphics card.  Instead, you may want to consider other factors such as a TV out capabilities, meaning that you can hook up your computer to your television.

The two leading graphics card chip manufacturers are in nVidia and ATI. Any card better than the nVidia GeForce 6600 or ATI X700 should serve you well for years to come.

RAM is used by your computer to execute tasks. For the business user, the amount of RAM you have will probably make the greatest difference in the perceived speed of your computer. When your computer maxes out its RAM usage, it's forced to start using the hard drive to swap data. A hard drive is much, much slower than RAM

Since RAM is so cheap these days, you should get a minimum of 512 MB. Don’t get any less, or you’ll hinder the effectiveness of the computer’s CPU. 1 GB or more of RAM is ideal.

It's nice to buy a computer with two hard drives, which gives you some insurance against data loss should one of your hard drive crash. At the very minimum, get a computer with one hard drive no less than 200 GB in size. You'll find that over time, your hard drive quickly fills up with all kinds of data.

SATA hard drives are newer and faster than IDE drives, so go with a SATA drive if you have the choice. But for the home business user, there won’t be that much difference, so don’t stress over it.

It would be beneficial if your computer came equipped with a DVD-RW drive. Such a drive can read and write DVDs, which is excellent for backing up data, and most can read and write CDs as well. The latest DVD drives support “dual layer writing,” which means they can store up to 8.5 GB of data on a single DVD. One such DVD might be enough to back up all the data you need for your home business.

As for the computer’s monitor, LCD screens are now the standard. They offer many advantages over the older CRT monitors, especially in the area of weight. For the average user, a 17 inch LCD monitor should be sufficient. The cost for larger monitors quickly increases.

So that's a brief summary of what to look for when you're buying a new computer. Fortunately, computers are getting faster and faster and yet prices continue to fall. As a cost-conscious home business owner, that's great news. And remember, a computer you purchased for use in your home office is most likely eligible for tax benefits.