🚀 go-pugleaf

Date:         Tue, 19 Jan 1999
From:         David Hoyte <dhoyte@connix.com>
To:           <NETTRAIN@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU>
cc:           Carolyn Christianson <cyberian@TICON.NET>
Subject:      Re: computer-purchase
              =====================

>     Could someone please tell me what spec's you would suggest for
> someone just purchasing a home computer for Internet use......is 64
> meg of ram enought, or would you suggest more.....Is that alone, or
> the size of the hard drive....make it fast.....I would appreciate
> all the spec's and their meaning....PLEASE.....TIA,
>
> Carolyn Christianson, Media Specialist, Janesville, Wi.
--------------------
Carolyn,
        I very much appreciate the need for your question . . .
My one bit of hard-earned advice is to buy a computer with the fastest
chip you can afford - even that will be rated "slow" all too soon,
and some Internet transmissions will stop in the middle.

        I recently had to replace a 5-year-old 33MHz Compaq 4/33 with
a Compaq Deskpro EP that runs at the speed of 300MHz.
Cost $945.- and worth every penny.

        Details are below.
        Good luck!              David Hoyte

PS: The Mac/PC decision depends on your applications: Mac does most
high school work, but NOT business/technical applications:
few of these programs are written to run on Mac.

--------- DETAILS ----------
1. I bought an IBM-compatible computer, a Compaq 4/33, in October '93.
   Its central processor chip was a "486", operating at the speed of
   33MHz, and it was excellent for work on the Internet.

2. By early '98, however, this computer was exasperatingly slow on the
   Internet. There were halts of 20-30 sec in transmissions of email
   to me from my own Internet Service Provider (ISP): transmission
   just stopped dead, the RD light on the 56Kbps modem stayed dark;
   then it started flashing again with renewed transmission; then
   dark for another period.
   Transmissions from most Web sites were even slower.
   CEO of the ISP had same conditions set up on a home computer "to
   investigate the problem".

   I got the answer to the problem from the manager in charge of
   computers in the public libraries of a city. He had some computers
   with 486 chips, and some with the faster Pentium chips, all using
   the same ISP as me for Internet connection. He had constant
   complaints from users of the 486-chip computers, and none from the
   Pentium-chip users.

3. In November '98, I bought a computer that runs at a speed of
   300MHz, 9 times the speed of the 486-chip, and all Internet
   connections are very fast.
   I think my own ISP, and many Web sites, may use small fast
   computers that are rather inflexible: they can not "mesh" with a
   33MHz computer, they jam and just stop sending.