What you need to know about
Buying a Computer
Buying a computer can be a frustrating investment. Usually
we spend all this money and we have more problems down
the road. I have written this article to give you real
information on buying a computer. I’ll tell you whats
important and whats not. And if you follow my advice
you’ll get exactly what you paid for and exactly what
you want.
Price
First things first, the most important
thing to remember when buying a computer is; the longer
you wait, the more you will get for your money. With
the rapid advancements in technology, and the infinite
greed of computer manufacturers, new computers lose
value faster than cars. So, what do you do? Wait, wait,
and wait until you can’t wait anymore. Personally, I
am still running a Pentium III with 512 MB of RAM. And
you know what? My computer runs my programs just as
fast as those P4’s.
Deals
The next issue is to get the best deal
for your money. Computers are so cheap these days and
the price seems to be getting lower and lower. Where
the manufacturers get you is when you upgrade the computer
into something decent. So, always look for the deals.
Dell, for example, has a different special every week
or so. Sometimes it’s free shipping, memory upgrades,
hard drive upgrades, etc. Be patient and get the good
deal. It is your money after all.
Warranty
I’ll give it to you real simple. The
most important part of any computer purchase is its
warranty. A $400.00 computer is a $400.00 computer no
matter which way you slice it. It has the cheapest parts
inside and probably won’t last more than 2 years. But
at these prices, who cares if you have to replace it
in 2 years. By then, there will definitely be something
infinitely better. However, these $400 dollar computers
with their substandard parts, though cheap, will probably
cause more headaches with system crashes than they are
worth.
So you have this warranty on your computer.
Careful though, most 400 dollar computers have a limited
1 year warranty. What does that mean? If your hard drive
crashes after that 1st year, you are on your own. And
with almost all manufacturers, if it crashes within
your warranty period, you have to take or send the computer
to them, where they keep it for a period of time for
the repair. This is why I recommend Dell computers to
all of my clients. Dell will come to you and they have
no problem giving you longer warranties, although that
will up the price of your computer. It is definitely
worth it.
Support
Of course, remember the telephone tech
support. Regardless of you warranty, you will always
have to call first and let them try to help you over
the phone. This can be a long and exhaustive waste of
time. If you are in the Miami or Miami Beach area, contact
Miami Computer Repair at 305-350-1953 and we will be
more than happy to help cut through the tech support
red tape. For the rest of you, good luck and definitely
take into consideration the telephone technical support
department. Even if you have a warranty, you will still
have to call the manufacturer. The most common thing
for manufacturer support to do is blame your problem
on somebody else. How often have we heard,”no its not
our hardware, its Microsoft”. Then you call Microsoft,
at a per incident fee, and they tell you, “No it’s not
our software it’s this or that”. What a nightmare. Nobody
wants to take responsibility for their product. Even
Dell does this. And if you don’t know what you are doing,
what can you possibly say? The other most common “solution”
for the manufacturers to do is have you use the Restore
CD. This is an extremely dangerous thing to do. The
reason they have you do this is to reset the computer
it was when you first bought it. If you still have a
problem, then it must be their hardware. What they don’t
tell you is that the Restore CD will wipe out all of
your data, all of your settings, and all of the work
you have put on that computer.
BEFORE RUNNING A SYSTEM RESTORE YOU MUST BACKUP. Contact
Miami Computer
Repair if you need Data Recovery.
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