I am sitting here, staring at the screen wondering what I am to do next... This is a pretty typical thing since there is always more then one thing to do. It seems as though it becomes "what is the priority"? This is where I turn to read my incoming email only to find a question through allexperts.com It appears one more person is using windows 98 and is having some sort of problem. I went ahead and said to get all the updates including mediaplayer 10 however as they did infact, mentioned it was not compatible but I overlooked that.. But of course they were correct. Thing is, now I am faced with continuing to respond by trying to solve the problem, when it seems more time is spent trying to patch and solve then to simply put it aside and get something that IS compatible.
Yes, sure there will always be some sort of software program or hardware patch that you can get which will make your system compatible, but at what cost? Again you think of hardware costs, however you often overlook the obvious "time" cost, and that is your time! When you don't work for anyone but yourself, in my case, you are first looking at time as an issue. I find myself constantly realizing that there is only 24 hours in a day.
Continuing on... I come across job whereas my client was given an old computer, and being new to the computer thing, she was thankful as it would give her a chance to see if she liked this "internet thing" before going out and spending a pile of money, much like you would do if you were starting some other hobby. This is fine on your pocketbook, but what if you look at it from the point of view like you are giving a child a pair of very used skates with no ankle support, to become the next Wayne Gretzky... I don't think so.. You would want to make sure that child had the best "money could buy".. This should work for computer shopping as well. But this only works if you talk with someone knowledgeable about computers. Basically you take the amount of money you want to spend and try to get the most out of it with what you feel you will be doing. For example, if you are thinking of getting in to digital photography, you probably are going to want a large monitor, a lot of memory, and a multimedia card reader built in. Fortunately these are pretty much typical of any new computer. But it is the "extra memory" or the "larger hard drive" that may make or break your decision to buy that computer.
A general rule of thumb that I have found when it comes to computers and "technology" is to first decide how much money you have to spend and then decide what is the most important features you are looking for when it comes to that upgrade or new computer. If you can't afford the entire thing right away, then build your new computer in stages. Get what is important first, which is usually memory and/or a new hard drive (storage). If it is memory you are after, there really is no point in spending more then about $50 in this area since if you are having to buy SDRAM (pc 133 or pc 100) since the newest computers are now using DDR-SDRAM memory which has dropped to about half that of the PC133/100 memory. Since this one item alone may make you decide to buy that new mainboard, since it will be using the newer memory, you would most likely have to buy a new CPU with that new mainboard, since your old one will probably be too "slow" for the newer mainboard.
Hard drive (storage) is not a problem since you can buy whatever you want for your old computer and then when you do decide to upgrade to a newer one, the new hard drive you just purchased is easily transferred to the new computer.
The one last thing to remember is after you have bought or built your dream computer, don't be looking at the prices of the equipment you just installed because it is almost sure to be lower then the price you paid for it!
