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Holiday gifts for your PC
After you get yourself a brand
new computer, you're going to want to jazz it
up with all the latest bells and whistles. Here's
a rundown of some of this season's coolest products.
SCREEN DREAMS
Forget those honking cathode ray tube monitors
that flicker your eyesight away and take up close
to half your desk space. The slim, sleek LCD is
the vision of the future. Their recent drop in
price — you can figure on a minimum of $250
for a good quality 17" screen — has started
to make the technology more accessible to the
masses. Folks buying LCDs for home use need to
keep a few key points in mind: price, colour performance,
sharpness, and for those with 'queer eye for the
straight guy' taste, design. You'll want to make
sure that you're comfortable with the monitor's
native resolution (the number of pixels displayed
on the screen at once). If you're planning on
using the monitor to watch movies make sure you
pick one with a luminance of 900nits.
Buyer's tip: 17" monitors are
your best buy. The 21" variety cost twice as much
for only an extra four inches — definitely
not worth the investment.
WIRELESS NIRVANA
Has this ever happened to you? The cord of your
mouse forms — of its own volition —
a lethal lasso with which to fell your brimming
coffee cup. Its contents unleash a deadly deluge
over your keyboard, which lies there lifeless,
before you had a chance to hit save?
If so, it's time to save yourself
some torment. In fact, it's time for you to go
wireless. Cordless keyboards and mice offer the
convenience of going wherever you want them to
— with no messy wires. On top of that, most
of these devices are ergonomic and meant to offer
greater comfort. The one drawback used to be having
to replace the battery, but luckily, many mice
on the market nowadays are rechargeable. It's
worth the extra coin to opt for this feature —
which usually comes with a dock you can rest the
mouse on, similar to those of cordless phones.
Buyer's tip: Omnipresent gadgetmeisters
Logitech offer a wide range of wireless desktop
products, from top-of-the-line Bluetooth networks
(coming in at just under $300) to a simple starter
package for tech-neophytes (about a $60 investment).
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You can spend a lot on a computer
if you throw caution to the wind. A completely tricked-out
PC with all the fixings will run you about $40,000 at
Dell Canada's store and you can juice-up a built-to-order
Macintosh to the tune of $30,000. Anyone with a smidgeon
of horse sense should know it's absurd to spend that
much money on a computer certain to greatly depreciate
in value as soon as it's out of the box. A less obvious
mistake, but an equally foolish one, is the bottom-of-the-line
PC purchase. Smart shoppers seek out computers with
specifications in the "sweet spot" of price and performance.
These computers won't break the bank and have a decent
lifespan before they become obsolete or you get tired
of them — whichever comes first.
FOOL'S
GOLD
There are two very good reasons not to buy very low-end
PCs. First, Microsoft is slated to release a new operating
system (the working environment of your computer) called
Vista late next year. It will be the company's most
significant upgrade since Windows 95 came out a decade
ago. Vista will require a fairly powerful computer to
run, so if you buy a cheapo PC this year it could be
nearly obsolete in a year's time.
Second, most very cheap PCs have
what's called "integrated graphics," meaning the computer
lacks a dedicated video card and uses regular system
memory. What this means for you is that the computer
will feel much slower than a marginally more expensive
PC with "discreet graphics" — the nerdy marketing
term for having a dedicated video card with its own
memory, which spells faster performance for you.
STORAGE
AND RAM
Don't opt for an entry-level 40GB hard drive unless
you're really looking to save money right now or you're
positive your computing needs will be modest for the
foreseeable future. The sweet spot for value in hard
drives right now is between 160 to 250GB. If you buy
the components separately, you can find a 160GB hard
drive for about $100 and a 40GB drive for about $60.
So with the former you're getting quadruple the storage
space for less than half the price — well worth
it for the computer equivalent of a nice walk-in closet
instead of a cramped cupboard.
Random Access Memory, better known
as RAM, helps make your computer more zippy. This is
another area where computer-makers often cut corners.
For the here-and-now 512MB of RAM is the minimum to
run your computer effectively. Double that to 1GB, and
you'd be set for a while. A new computer with insufficient
RAM will frequently sputter and grind to a near halt
and generally feel like driving a Model T versus a Ferrari.
MAC
THE NICE
While many specialized programs — unfortunately
this includes a lot of electronic medical records software
— aren't available for Macintosh computers, if
you don't need to run any Windows-only stuff, you could
consider buying a Mac. Probably the biggest advantage
is that there has yet to be a single virus or spyware
program written to infect the new 10.4 operating system,
known as "Tiger." That means you don't even need to
run anti-virus software if you use a Mac. What's more,
according to the latest Consumer Reports roundup, Macs
led the industry in desktop computer reliability by
a wide margin.
The iMac G5 is where you'll find
the golden mean in the Apple lineup. It lies between
the cute and cheap but gutless Mac Mini and the loud,
pricey Powermac G5. The iMac G5 has an attractive all-in-one
space-saving, comes with a top-quality camera built
into the flicker-free LCD monitor for video-conferencing,
and its basic components are all in that elusive price/performance
sweet spot — the 17" is priced at $1,600 and the
20" at $2,000.
THE
LAPTOP CONUNDRUM
Do you crave the portability of a laptop but aren't
sure if it's worth the extra dough? The thing you need
to ask yourself is, what do you want to do with this
computer. Realistically, if it's going to sit on your
desk most of the time you might as well save yourself
some money and get a sturdier desktop. But if you attend
a lot of conferences or work in a lot of different clinical
settings, a portable could be a godsend.
It's best to steer clear of Mac
laptops for the moment. Their current stable is less
than impressive, though better models are in the works.
In Windows-based laptops, the late-2006 Vista operating
system upgrade again looms large. "Integrated graphics"
is less of a worry in laptops — it's usually thrown
in not only because of price but because it extends
battery life. But as with desktops you should make sure
it has a dedicated video card — preferably one
that offers 128MB of video RAM (any salesperson worth
his or her salt should be able to tell you what video
card the laptop is packing).
The $1,700 Dell Inspiron 9300 with
a 128MB ATI Mobility Radeon X300 with an 80GB hard drive
and 512MB of RAM is a good choice. If you're a fan of
tablet PCs — a type of laptop in which you can
write on screen with a stylus — the Acer C200 is
a good choice with a street price of about $2,200, but
again, be sure to insist on the dedicated video card
option.
THE
CRYSTAL BALL
If you are truly cautious, you may want to hold off
on buying any new computers until next year to be absolutely
certain you won't get burned by the major changes afoot
for both Windows and Macintosh computers. However, if
you need to buy computers right away, thumb your nose
at low-end clunkers and opt for a mid-level desktop
or a higher-end laptop. You should be able to weather
changes to the computer landscape and have your machines
remain useful five years or more.
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PATIENTS & PRACTICE
