I've been thinking about the "minimum" specifications for buying a new computer these days.  Here's what I've come up with, but I'm hoping that others will chime in and offer their suggestions.

• Core Duo processor ... or equivalent
• 1 gig Ram
• 80 gig hard drive
• video card with 256 megs ONBOARD (not shared)

This configuration will let you run Vista with all of it's bells and whistles.

For a notebook, you also want to see if you can get something like the Centrino designation so that you'll have 4+ (hopefully 6) hours of battery life.

I'd also want a 15.5"  wide format screen (ok, 17" is better, but that's more for desktop replacement than for portable).  For the 15.5 screen, I like 1024x768 resolution. So if you get the wider screen, you'll want more pixels in proportion to the screen size increase. 

My 19" desktop display (LCD, don't go buying a CRT!) is running 1280x1024 pixels.  Visually that's pretty much the equivalent of the 1024x768 on my notebook.  It's also the largest number of pixels the video driver will display at 32 bits of color ...


19" monitors are under $200 these days.  For a serious upgrade on a desktop computer, go for a wide format screen say 22" wide!  You'll probably have to also make sure to get a compatible video card.  I've seen ads for 22" monitors that cost less than $300.  They also have DVI inputs, which makes them useful as TV monitors, too.

Joe,

On monitors, I would say that you want to make sure that the graphics card can support two monitors.  With flat pnaels coming down in price having two monitors is one of the best things you can do to improve productivity.

Along those same lines, we really prefer monitors that can rotate into the portrait mode because so many things (word documents, SSG programs, web pages, pdf files, etc) are layed out in portrait mode.  What this eliminates is the need to scroll up and down on the page to see the whole page.  BIG time-saver (now I just have to find a computer pojector that can do this for teaching investment classes).

We just bought two Dell Inspiron 1501 laptops for the investment chapter at $519 each (bought just before Vista).  They support having an extended desktop on a second monitor and will support that second screen being rotated to portrait setting.  Nice little machines for $519, they only have 512Meg but then they are running XP rather than Vista

By the way, I have heard that when Microsoft demonstrates Vista they always have 4Gig in the machine for it to really shine.  That might be overkill but thought I would mention it.

Paul Madison

Sorry, Joe, no gift, but Happy Birthday anyhow. 


Dorothy

At several recent Microsoft events that I've attended recently, the presenters have used Virtual PC -- having set up several different "virtual computers" on the same box -- to do demonstrations.

What specific Virtual PC program do you suggest?  I do admit to having screwed up my operating ssytems multiple times but have found System Restore to be of great value in getting back to a solid system.

It seems Microsoft uses PC's having 4MB's of RAM for these demostrations.  I do think this is a sign of things to come and perhaps companies that would benefit by increased RAM usage would benefit.

Dan Hess