Looking to upgrade your home office hardware?
Take some advice from Chicago-based technology and business consultant David Wagner who, for the past five years, has been helping businesses of all sizes find the right hardware and software.
- Buy a brand you trust. There are plenty of off-brand bargains, but businesses can’t risk less-than-perfect performance. Stick with names like Gateway, Dell, IBM and Hewlett-Packard. And be sure that the manufacturer’s service warranty is in effect — if your dealer tinkers with the insides of your computer, you might lose your coverage.
- Buy all the memory you can afford. Today, a serious business machine should really have 64 MB of RAM. In the lifetime of whatever computer you buy, that standard will probably double, and perhaps even quadruple. Also, make sure the computer is upgradable at least by a factor of four. And remember: Chip speed matters. A new business machine should have at least 200 megahertz of speed.
- Buy a machine with a tower case. Get as big a box as you can fit on or under your desk. You can count on having to upgrade your machine before you replace it, and upgrades require the kind of extra space that only towers can offer. For those businesses that require high-speed graphics, a Macintosh is still the best way to go. PC-standard hardware will cost more for great graphics capabilities, and it will still never give you the last 10 percent of premium performance that a Macintosh system can provide.
- Go for a networking card, even if you have only one computer in your office. Your business may grow. Or you may find other reasons to network your computer with another computer — or for that matter to your toaster, microwave or TV, once new, computer-like appliances become standard.
It’s hard to go wrong if you buy a brand you trust, pick up all the memory you can, and prepare yourself to invest about half the purchase price of your computer in upgrades over the next 24 months. After 24 months, it’s time to buy a brand new computer.
