5. But What If I'm Economizing?
If you are economizing, here's a simple rule:
In February 2004, the PC market is all Pentium IV and AMD Athlon
chips, speeds ranging from 2.2 to 3.4GHz. For best value, look at the
middle of that range.
Why? Because of the way manufacturers' price-performance curves are
shaped. The top-of-line system is generally boob bait for corporate
executives and other people with more money than sense. Chances are the
system design is new and untried — if you're at the wrong point in the
technology cycle, the chip may even be a pre-production sample, or an early
production stepping with undiscovered bugs like the infamous FDIV problem
in early Pentiums. You don't need such troubles. Better to go with a
chip/motherboard combination that's been out for a while and is known good.
It's not like you really need the extra speed, after all.
Besides, if you buy one of these gold-plated systems, you're only
going to kick yourself three months later when the price plunges by
30%. Further down the product line there's been more real competition
and the manufacturer's margins are already squeezed. There's less
room for prices to fall, so you won't watch your new toy lose street
value so fast. Its price will still drop, but it won't plummet
sickeningly.
Again, bear in mind that the cheapest processor you can buy new today
is plenty fast enough for Linux. So if dropping back a speed level or
two brings you in under budget, you can do it with no regrets.
Another easy economy measure is looking for repaired or reconditioned
parts with a warranty. These are often as good as new, and much cheaper.
(This is an especially good tactic for monitors and hard drives.)
Your display is one of the areas where pinching pennies is
not a good idea. You're going to be looking at that
display for hours on end. You are going to be using the screen real estate
constantly. Buy the best quality, largest screen you possibly can — it
will be worth it.
There is a fair amount of price variance among equivalent video
cards, so shop aggressively here. We won't do this, but if you're on a
budget, one easy thing to trade away is bit depth. Manufacturers like to
include 24- and 32-bit "photographic" color as sizzle in their
advertisements, but unless you're doing something like specialty
photocomposition work or medical graphics you'll probably never use more
than 65535 colors. So you can settle for 16-bit color (used to be you could
settle for 8-bit, before websites started routinely stepping outside
the 216-color "web-safe" palette).
On the other hand, you probably don't need the latest and
greatest CD-ROM device. High-speed CD-ROMS are really designed for
people playing CD-ROM games or other applications involving image and
sound archives. If you're doing the Linux thing, chances are you'll
primarily use CD-ROMs that are code archives. Your average transfer
size will be small and an apparent speed of 6x or even 4x quite
satisfactory. So, if you need to, here's a place to cut costs by
buying well behind the leading edge.
Free eBook: 
