Essay Sample on Buying a computer

Introduction

Computers are the basic tool in today's work, for my needs, I will require a computer to support a small design business-a design/print shop. Computers have come of age in the design sector as they offer the best interfaces that one can use in producing high-quality designs and other related templates. Outlined, are the specifications of the computer I propose to purchase.

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Software

To produce versatile and unique productions, it is necessary to have two or more design software. However, the primary software package I hope to purchase is the Adobe Creative suit. The Adobe Creative Suite is a bundle of design software consisting of Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Adobe Spark, Photoshop Sketch and Capture. This is the most versatile software suite available currently to creatives and designers and is purchased at $49.99. The Adobe creative suite is continuously updated by Adobe and hence, there is no need to purchase new versions upon release. However, I intend to supplement the creative suite with other graphics software like Corel Draw and Blender. Having the additional software will help me leverage the advantages they have over the Adobe Creative cloud especially that of not requiring licenses.

For the purpose of design and print publishing, however, I will major on Photoshop and InDesign as they are the best tuned towards that purpose. Hence, the computer hardware I choose for the task should be able to handle the grit of this software and additionally leave space for other software utilities like Open Office or Microsoft Office as these are equally important.

Hardware

Graphic design software is normally processor-intensive, this trend of being processor intensive will seem to increase as one uses the software and also as the creators of this software create new versions of the software. However, for most design software, a CPU-Central processing Unit (that usually composes of the processor and memory devices), that has at least a processing power of 1Ghz (implying that the processor can do one billion calculations per second), is necessary. As per the budget available, however, it is possible to get a higher specification of a processor. However, there is more to a computer's processing capability than just the processor. The second aspect of a computer to be used in design and print is the memory available in the machine.

There are two types of memory in a computer, primary memory, and secondary memory. Primary memory, normally called RAM (Random Access Memory) consists of chips that aid the processor and other devices store machine data for short periods of time. RAM also enables the computer processor to perform its tasks by acting as a 'workspace' for the processor. Hence, the more RAM a computer has, the higher the number of processes that the machine can accommodate. RAM is preferred to ROM (Read Only Memory) that is usually the computer's hard drive as retrieval of information from the RAM chips is faster than that of the ROMs storage spaces. For the computer to be purchased, I will need a minimum, 8 GB of RAM; or possibly more if the budget will allow. For best spec performance however or future use, the RAM of the computer could be upgraded to 16 or 32 GB of RAM.

Peripherals

Hard Drive

A hard drive commonly referred to as ROM is where one stores files for future reference and also where software is installed on. There are two primary types of hard drives currently, Solid State Drives (SSD) and Hard Disk Drives (HDD). Normally, all computers come equipped with a hard disk drive, however, new generation computers are increasingly coming with both HDD and SSD for additional storage capacity. HDDs are metallic disks with a magnetic coating and a read/write head. They physically oscillate, similar to record players, only at much-advanced speeds. SSDs are made up of a sequence of memory chips and therefore have no moving parts.

There are advantages and disadvantages to HDDs and SSDs. In terms of storage capacity, HDDs carry the day as they have higher space ratings, per unit cost. However, SSDs are still a new technology and this fact may soon be reversed. With regard to durability, SSDs carry the day as they have no mechanical parts, hence no wear and tear. HDDs are cheaper, usually about half the price for the same amount of storage. HDDs are very susceptible to damage, especially to drops. The real benefit of SSDs is that they offer faster speeds of access. Hence, the computer to be purchased may need a versatile combination of both HDD and SSD.

For design and publications as it involves the production of large files, a hard disk space of at least 1TB is ideal, however, this can be split as 500GB of HDD and 500GB of SSD space.

Monitor

For the monitor or display unit of the computer, a resolution of 1280 x 800 is ideal. However, same as RAM, the higher the resolution rating, the better, as one will be able to see the designs much better and ideally, design much better.

Most screens on the marketplace are TN (Twisted Nematic) panels. They're extremely common because they're very inexpensive. Regrettably, they're low-priced because their color production isn't great. For the purpose of graphic design, one would be better off if they purchased an IPS (In-Plane Switching) monitor or a VA (Vertical Alignment) Panel or. IPS are the most costly of the three choices, but their price is definitely worth the quality of the display.Printer and Internet Connection

For the best printout, it is best to buy a full-scale color printer, with external cartridges. This will make the swapping of empty/used cartridges for new ones easier. A laser printer is great for print publications.

Final Computer Decision and Specs

Name: ASUS K550 15.6" Full HD Notebook

Specs of the Machine

Graphics 15.6 HD screen (1920 x 1080) with NVIDIA GeForce GT 950M

Performance Intel i7 with 8 GB of RAM

Storage 256 GB SSD

Battery life Expect hours

OS Windows 10

Thickness / Weight 1.1 / 5.4 lbs

Cost of Hardware $699.99

Software cost $49.99

I went for a laptop PC as it has the benefit of mobility hence I can work from anywhere. Additionally, I picked a Windows PC over a Mac as their software is readily available as well as spare parts.