Other things they may ask you: Networking! Used to be COMPLETELY UNNECESSARY for a typical home user. Now may almost be a can't-live-without. Two major things it will be of use for. First, if you have more than one computer in your household, as many people do nowadays, a network card allows them to "communicate" with each other so the people using them can easily share files and things between them. If there is only one printer in the house, a network will let anyone print a document using that printer. The second thing is for any sort of broadband internet connection.
If your connection to the internet is through a modem, your computer will hook up to your phone jack, and dial a number just like making a call from your phone, except it connects you to internet data. If you are connecting via dial-up, GET THE FASTEST MODEM YOU CAN. No skimping. The net is growing and expecting more and more people to have faster connections. If you have broadband available and can afford it, go for it. This means DSL or Cable internet. Either of these technologies connects to your computer through a box, but instead of hooking to a phone jack, they hook into your cable or DSL line on one end, and into a standard network jack on the computer. So that's why it is advantageous to have a network capability already in your computer when you buy it. Also, with networking, all the computers in your house can now share the same broadband internet connection. (A much more compelling reason than file sharing, eh?)
All machines will have basic sound. You can get fancy, with better quality sound, more choices for inputs and outputs, which would be useful if you want to use the computer for music recording and editing, or want to hook up a bunch of speakers and watch DVDs playing on your computer.
For CD... a CD burner would be standard. With files getting larger, a CD burner is a very practical thing for storing and sharing files as well as for backing up. A DVD player is also a good choice for watching movies, and also some software now comes on a DVD instead of several CDs. (A DVD holds a lot more data than a CD).A DVD drive will also read CDs. There are also drives that read and write (burn) CDs and play DVDs, this may be a good all around choice. Finally you can get a DVD burner, this will also play and burn CDs. With proper software you can create, edit and burn your own DVDs and play them in your living room (not all drives burn discs that will play well in all settop DVD players, so you will want to check this specifically if that is what you want to do). I have a DVD burner, but not for making video DVDs, I use mine to store and backup data. I have a lot of data on my machine, so when I do a backup, instead of sitting at the computer to swap CDs each time one becomes full, I can put in one DVD, walk away, and just come back when it is done. It is a beautiful thing.
No one asked about monitors. Bigger the better, but bigger is more important for graphics work, not only for image size but also to be able to put all of your software tool palettes for editing onthe screen and still see your image. My setup actually has TWO monitors attached (you need two video cards for this, or one special videocard with two monitor hookups, which is what I have). This way when I am working in Photoshop or GoLive or Illustrator, I can keep all my "tools" on the smaller second screen and have my large main screen clear to see the project I am working on. Also is nice to have a document (like a forum post) open on one screen while I compose response in Notepad on the other, without having to juggle the two to reference the questions
.
The more important decision nowadays is LCD vs CRT (CRT is a standard monitor, big box with a glass picture tube). LCD has advantages of being small and light, if desk space is an issue. But their image quality doesn't meet the standard of a CRT. An LCD is a "pixel based" device, which means it is designed for one particular resolution. It will look very good at that resolution, but you are stuck with that resolution if you want a sharp picture. LCDs are also not very color accurate, which is important if you are doing design work, especially with photographs. LCDs are also more expensive. If I had the extra cash, I would use an LCD for my second screen and keep my nice CRT for the actual editing... that would free up a lot of desk space here.
Did I cover it all? USB? That's standard by now, and everything from mouses (but not chickens of the sea) to printers to external hard drives hook up to them. Firewire may be an option, this type of connection is much faster than USB and is important for video editing. If you have a digital video camera, for example, and want to transfer the video to your computer for editing. Note this refers to a real video camera, not the video mode of a regular digital camera.
Intel vs AMD? I don't think there is much to consider. I am steadfast in the use of Intel but only because of personal prejudice I guess. I have used an AMD machine with no problems and no complaints. Since Intel designs the chips, software makers write their software for Intel chips, and AMD makes their chips to "mimic" the Intel chips so that the same software runs, it just seems more "stable" to me. In practice though, I think that is not only not the case, but also software designers have embraces some of the features that AMD has added to their processors, so it is not longer strictly a "follow-the-leader" game.
Any other questions?
Angel, to address some of your specific comments...
Wordprocessing is not taxing at all, so any basic computer will serve your purpose. See my "minimum" suggestions posted above. For software you will want to ask your school about that, for the classes you will probably want to use at home the same software they are using in school, whether it be Microsoft Word or Wordperfect or something different. Ask them.
Downloading, uploading, and printing pics is also pretty easy for the most basic computer... until you said "Photoshop". The program itself will require a little more from the machine, but having a real professional app also indicates you may want to do some serious work on this machine, if not now, then sometime soon. For Photoshop, you'll want a fairly fast processor, but not something that will break the bank. If you will be working on large files (high resolution images from a higher-end digital camera... or high resolution original artwork) then you'll need to make sure you have enough memory for Photoshop to work on them. I would definitely not go below 512Mb, and 1Gb is probably the sweet spot here (note there aren't really any choices in-between). I would highly recommend the 1Gb if you are going to be doing serious photo editing, EXCEPT for the fact that my "monster" machine here has "only" 512Mb, and I work on large photoshop files with Illustrator and GoLive open on the same machine, and don't really have a problem. I think you can definitely get by with 512 but if you can afford the 1G go for it. If you are just using Photoshop for small picture editing of low res "snapshots" strictly for printing for a photo album, the lessor requirements will certainly do fine. Photoshop is a really serious tool though, if that is part of your classwork, they may be expecting you to do some fancy stuff with it, so the higher end would be better.
Another consideration is that Photoshop files will take up considerably more room than the jpegs and gifs you download and use on the web. (jpeg and gif are "compressed" formats designed to provide a small file size, at the expense of image quality or flexibility.) So a larger hard drive will may be a bigger consideration as well.
For web building, will you be taking a class in that as well? Or working (or learning) on your own? Techically a whole website can be built with nothing other than a text editor and some software to process the images (like Photoshop). Most likely though you are thinking about a more serious web building tool. Something designed to do simple websites won't be too system taxing... but something like GoLive or DreamWeaver will demand more. The same 512M memory I suggested would be good here, and 1G if possible. Remember that I have 512M and often run GoLive and Photoshop together with other apps too with no problem.
A faster processor will also be of use with GoLive and probably with Dreamweaver as well (I haven't used Dreamweaver so I cannot speak first hand). In particular I find GoLive has a LOT of palettes that I not only like to keep open at once, but many of them have to be made large to be useful. GoLive is the only app that I really can't stand having to work with only one monitor. What you can do though is consider the largest monitor you can afford... it's not the size that matters (a monitor running at 1024x786 resolution will have the same amount of stuff on screen no matter what the monitor size) but rather the ability to crank UP the resolution... which makes everything on screen
smaller, which lets you fit more Windows and palettes on screen comfortably, and then the larger monitor will help so you can still read everything on the screen.
And if you are doing photo editing there is no contest... CRT, not LCD. If you are doing color work you won't be able to adjust colors acurately with an LCD. A CRT will be sharper for editing as well. Get as fine a "dot pitch" as you can (the smallest number) to show the smallest details the most sharply. Make sure the monitor will work at the resolution AND refresh rate that you want to work at... resolution is how many pixels fit on screen, and refresh rate is how fast the picture redraws. The 60Hz "standard" refresh rate is horrible, some people (like myself) can actually see the screen flickering, and it gives me a headache to work at it for any period of time. Screen flicker from too low a refresh rate is more noticable in your "periferal" vision as well. Luckily most monitors and video cards will work at 75hz or 85hz which should be fine. Many monitors won't be able to do their HIGHEST resolution and KEEP their high refresh rate however. The highest resolution may well be (and often is) something that would be too small to work with. But if you want an 1800 x 1200 resolution for example and a 75Hz refresh rate, it isn't good enough to find a monitor with that resolution and that refresh rate... it has to be able to do that refresh rate AT that resolution. These figures are always published in the monitor specs.
So get a CRT and use the money you save by not buying an LCD to get a larger model CRT. You could probably work on 17in, 19in might be really nice, 21 in would be perfect but might be too expensive for now. You can get a 19in and be happy with it until you are ready to upgrade.
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I think tomorrow you need to ask me this again so I can give you an answer that you can actually use... this train-of-thought, stream of consciousness stuff works well for me but must make everyone's head spin.
Hope this starts to clarify at least a few things though. I should organize this better so it is more presentable.
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