Delano Herald Journal

Serving the communities of Delano, Loretto, Montrose, MN, and the surrounding area

Mark Ollig’s “Bits & Bytes” 6/22/98



Last week the annual PC Expo convention and conference
was held in New York. It brings the latest technology and the experts from
the biggest players in the PC/Internet industry together.

Thousands of people come to hear and see the newest innovations
in software, hardware, networking, and the Internet.

I visited the website that was set-up for this, www.pcexpo.com,
and found some interesting survey data that was gathered from top corporate
technology decision makers.

When the question was asked on the best way to get a corporate
executives’ attention, 441 say they are most likely to respond to e-mail
first, 118 said pagers, and 100 voice mail.

When asked what office tools they are most likely to bring
on vacation: 320 said their cell phone, 317 would bring their laptop computer,
206 their pager, and 128 said none of the above!

The Internet was number one in their main source of news,
followed by 274 who turn to newspapers;208 TV and 115 listen to the radio.
Although, since you can listen to the radio over the Internet now, I am
not sure if this should count under the Internet or not!

Also interesting to note is that 1,000 executives said
they prefer e-mail for long-distance business correspondence, followed by
266 who use the telephone, 31 prefer a fax and, 16 who type out a letter.

When the correspondence is with a friend or relative long
distance, their preference switches: 560 use the telephone, 407 go back
to e-mail and 5 would send them a fax!

The PC Expo is considered one of the most important computing
events in the country. It features more than 500 exhibits and attracts over
100,000 attendees who are involved in management of corporate technologies
and corporate decision making. It has three days of conferences, with the
speakers all being experts in their fields. I encourage you to visit the
PC Expo website and find out more.

Moving on to those of you who are shopping for the latest
and greatest in a new personal computer, some “tech” questions
you can ask the salesperson. First, would naturally be how fast is the central
processor? The cpu is important naturally, but the processing speed of a
computer is also determined by the “Bus speed” of the data that
flows from the cpu through the mother board circuitry to other areas in
the computer, such as the hard drive.

The new Pentium II computers have bus speeds of 100 Mhz,
which is about one-third faster than older PC’s. Why should bus speed make
any difference? Well, the name of the game is moving data quickly from the
CPU to other parts of the computer, such as the hard disk. Putting a 400
Mhz chip in a machine with say, a 66 Mhz mother board bus would be like
driving a Ferrari in a traffic jam!

Pentium II cpu chips are rated at 350 and 400 Mhz, which
is what you would want to use if you have a large database consisting of
spreadsheets or graphic files. However, if most of your computing centers
around word processing and e-mail you could save money by buying the 333Mhz
Pentium II instead. The 333Mhz Pentium II will have 66Mhz bus speeds.

As far as graphics, ask what kind of video system the computer
has. The AGP or advanced graphics port is a new technology that dramatically
speeds up how quickly a computer can display images and video.

Of course, hard disk space is very important these days.
You can never have too much storage. Dell Dimension has a 14.4 GB hard drive
that will store almost anything. My advice would be to get the largest hard
drive you can afford.

Heat is a concern when you start adding more cards or RAM
to a computer. If you’re going to get the Pentium II chip, I would suggest
two cooling fans as this chip does generate a lot of heat. If you’re getting
a slower cpu and you’re not going to be adding extras, one cooling fan is
the standard.

Tower or Minitower cases? A tower case is a tall vertical
box with plenty of drive bays for future growth, and a minitower is a slightly
smaller vertical box.

Today you can get a lot of computer performance for your
money. Don’t be afraid to ask questions to find the one you’ll feel comfortable
with.

Have a great week!

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