tech options

Choose Your Poison
Finding your way through the noise to pick the right computer

By Theo Gantos

Saving money is a topic everyone’s interested in, particularly when it applies to computers. There are some great deals to be had right now for smart shoppers.

All roads lead to Rome and everything in the PC world revolves around the motherboard. This is the board that the processor and everything else plugs into. PC motherboards are divided into two basic design types: Pentium II (slot one) and Pentium socket 7. The Pentium II is based on the previously very expensive, unpopular (and now essentially discontinued) Pentium Pro chip which had disappointing performance for all but NT servers. Intel speeded it up, added some cache memory chips to make it perform better for Windows 95 and put all these circuits onto a sealed card that plugs into an Intel patented slot. Intel has not agreed to license the patent on this slot to any other computer or chip manufacturer yet (the FTC and Justice Department are said to be looking into it). You can imagine that with no competition Intel certainly has little incentive to keep prices competitive. In fact, Pentium II processors are TWICE the price of equivalent performance Pentium socket 7 chips from AMD and Cyrix. Certainly someone has to pay for all those dreadful Intel dancing spacemen ads on primetime TV.

Intel is pushing to discontinue the older Pentium chip and move everyone to the higher profit (and currently un-clonable) Pentium II. The Pentium socket 7 systems are now available at bargain prices as a result. You won’t have to sacrifice any performance, either. AMD has MMX-type processors running at almost 300Mhz and Cyrix has designs that are about 266Mhz. Cyrix gives you the most for your money as their processors start around $100 and go to about $300. The AMD K6 line is the performance leader beating the regular Intel Pentium MMX chips handily while priced about the same. Don’t buy into the Pentium II hype, choose a system with the features and performance you need today at a more affordable price. Motherboards used to be the most expensive part of a system, now it’s the RAM and disks (and processor chip) that are the main investments.

You can better invest your money into the higher performance SCSI disk technology and forego the cheaper EIDE drives that are in most low end machines. Everything in the system is hobbled by the speed of your disk drive. SCSI is very fast, easy to add onto and should only add about $150-$200 to the price of the system. SCSI makes it much easier to add devices like scanners, Zip drives, tape, etc. without hassle. Try adding three devices through your parallel port and you’ll get a great exercise in frustrating driver conflicts, hardware incompatibilities and their ilk. You can also move the disk and controller over to a new system later, thus protecting your investment. Don’t skimp on your video card either; adding $80-100 to the price of the video card can triple the graphics performance, something Intel doesn’t bother to mention in their Pentium II ads.

Spend some of that money you saved skipping the Pentium II by purchasing more RAM. Nothing speeds up Windows 95 like throwing more RAM at it. You can make a slower processor beat a faster one if the slower one has more RAM. How much is enough? Start with at least 24MB (Bare minimum), go to 32 or even 64MB if you can afford it. RAM prices are around $3-4/MB so load up.

What about Mac users? Should you buy a Mac or a PC? Only you can decide for sure, I think its no contest as I get more work done in a given period of time on my PowerMac. The Mac G3’s are faster than any Pentiums right now. You can get PowerMac G3 systems starting at around $1600 including ethernet, SCSI, CDROM, Video Card, Sound, and 32MB RAM.

What about older or even used PowerMacs? I personally favor the systems with the upgradable processor card like the 7500, 7600, 7300, 8500, 8600, 9500, and 9600 machines. These come with a PowerPC 604 or 604e at various speeds and can be upgraded to use the G3 chip. The best value machine is the PowerMac 7300. It can be purchased for about $1200 right now so they are a steal. I stay away from the clones as the quality is lower and they have been known to have problems. But there are some great deals on used, refurbished or even new Power Computing, Umax and other Apple clone computers. You have to be willing to take a risk that someone will bother to make add-on and upgrade parts for these machines as time wears on.

Don’t always believe the advertising hype (or the salesperson’s pitch) when shopping for a new computer. The less glamorous machines have a lot of life and performance in them and can help you leverage 30-50% more machine for your money. Email any questions or comments.

Theo Gantos is president of TEKA, a technology consulting firm. Contact him: