How to Choose a Computer Brand

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Chris Bryce from superservice.com. I'd like to talk to you about how to choose a brand when buying a computer. Now when you're buying a computer, I generally say to steer clear of the off-brand or generic systems. So we'll focus only on the brand name systems. When you're looking for a brand, the best things to do is research online the components that are in that computer. Several of the manufacturers now will allow you to customize or build your system online which will allow you to choose the components that are going in, whether it be Intel or AMD processors, the types of the video cards that are going in, all the way down to software, memory, hard drives, almost every feature of that computer you can customize and some of the manufacturers you can even customize the colors now. So that's one thing to look at. The next thing to look at is, the warranty on the system. Some manufacturers carry more than a one year warranty. Some will have a three year warranty, some will have an on-site warranty and those are things to consider too, just in case your system does have problems during the first couple of years of use. One of the factors that contributes to how long a computer lasts or how long those warranties are, are the components that are inside. Although a lot of the components are shared across the industry, some of them are implemented differently. For instance, many of the computer manufacturers will use tin connections on their memory and on their processors. Now, some of the manufacturers out there, a limited few, will use completely gold connectors, 24 karat gold. Now the thing that that does is, over time, those systems will start to slow down incrementally because of the corrosion that happens on tin. Now gold as you know, is a metal that doesn't corrode. So if you have gold connectors, you won't have that corrosion problem and the system will last longer. There are some systems that I have seen that have lasted 10 to 15 years because of that reason with no problems at all. Other systems that last 3 to 5 are the ones that have the tin connections. But if you're looking for using a computer for a year or two, those things won't matter to you, but you may want to look at the on-site features of the warranties. Those are the main factors to look at when you're buying your computer and choosing your brand."