Everything But The Weed

Approved by:
Linda Maze, a Wedding photography Gainesville FL in Gainesville Florida

As an online retailer, the most vital tools I have are my computers. I use two desktop computers running on the Windows operating system; they are in constant use, helping me to create and maintain my web pages, upload items to my Etsy shop, edit product photos with Photoshop and print postal shipping labels to ship my products to customers. They’re rock solid, hard working computers. And I built them myself so I am sure top of the line parts went into their construction! A lot of people look at me and say YOU? Build computers?! I’m not kidding … It is just SO easy to put together a computer these days. But this was not always the case …

Our first computer was a Tandy RLX 1000 from Radio Shack. We bought this computer in the days before Windows; and it was VERY expensive. The OS was DOS, and basically we worked on a blue screen with white type – text. The video was only 16 colors so graphics were very limited. It did have a mouse, but … its use was limited. It had a 10mhz Intel processor. On the front it boldly proclaimed it had a hard drive – an amazing 60mb of storage! That baby was top of the line – fully upgraded … it had 1 MB RAM … hard wired to the board!

I built my first PC in about 1997 – 98. It was lightning fast in comparison to the Tandy RLX 1000 … it had an Intel Pentium 133mhz CPU and 32MB memory … with an 800 MB hard drive. Computers had improved a lot … but I still needed to load MS DOS before I could install windows – in those days a CD Drive couldn’t work until you edited the boot sector of the hard drive, actually writing in a line of code to make the PC aware that there was a CD drive installed. I think it was MSCDEX001.exe. It took me a week to figure out. Finally I did it; and successfully installed Windows 95 from a CD!

After solving that puzzle I took a course and became a certified PC technician. I’ve put together many PCs since then; and I must say today’s PCs are so much easier to build. If you can change a lightbulb and use a screwdriver, you can put together a fabulous computer! It also helps if you can follow directions … however, it really is a simple task. With a few hours time you’ll save yourself hundreds of dollars and be the proud owner of an amazing PC that will perform as well as or better than any pre-built brand name PC!

Inside a computer case are component parts. If you assemble a computer you get the opportunity to choose which components will go into it; if you build it, this can really be a personal computer!

The first thing to consider are the three main components – the motherboard, CPU and memory. Choose on the components that best fit your requirements. If you just use your PC for web surfing, you probably won’t require the most expensive, fastest microprocessor. But if you enjoy playing a lot of computer games, you’ll need a processor that is a lot faster. If you do a lot of photo editing, extra RAM will assist you. Today’s operating systems use additional memory to run, and you’ll probably require a minimum of 2 gigabytes … the more your PC has, the faster it will run. Most today’s computers can handle 6 gigabytes RAM or even more.

If you want to use your computer to watch DVDs or HDTV, or if you’re a gamer … a specialized video card is a definite plus. These fit into an expansion slot on the main board; one of the good things about these cards is they help reserve the installed memory for other uses. A lot of main boards have video capability, but share the RAM … taking it away from the usable memory.

Get a subwoofer and four speakers, an HD tuner card … hook it to a roof antenna … and listen to music or watch TV on your computer! This is great if you don’t have a lot of space, especially students in dorms.

Got a big collection of music on your computer? Movies or family photos? Your computer’s hard drive is like a filing cabinet … get a big one if you want to save a lot of files. A one TB hard drive is extremely inexpensive now, and most computers have the capability and space to contain two hard drives. In my case my site – well over a hundred pages – and the pictures I have on it – the product photos like silver rings – take up a major amount of hard drive space; that computer has two huge hard drives for this reason. Disk drives connect to your mainboard with cables. You’ll find sockets on the motherboard marked HDD1, HDD2 or SATA1, SATA2 … simply connect them and you’re all set!

That old CD drive I had such a hard time installing is in the garbage. Modern optical drives read and record both CDs and DVDs; there are even Blu-Ray writers now. Plug it in … and it runs. You may have to install a driver but you don’t have to edit the the boot sector of the hard drive … although I believe it was a good learning experience, its not required anymore!

You can easily install a multi card reader for a variety of Flash memory cards, Firewire ports … anything you might need computer.

Once the assembly is done, install Windows! The OS will bring it all together and make all the components work together.

In three hours … you can have a brand new computer!

Article ©2010 written by Robert Edwards. Bob is a metalsmith and jewelry designer, and is co-founder of a popular retail jewelry website featuring handcrafted gemstone jewelry. This article may be published on blogs and websites as content provided all links and this author’s statement remain intact.