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Time for your first PC!
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With competition hotting up and component prices falling, Home PCs are becoming more affordable. Want to go in for one?
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PERSONAL COMPUTER prices are falling. The well-known Indian brands of home PCs are competing aggressively with multinational models that have come up with attractive offers for the Indian market. To add to the competition, companies such as Samsung and LG, who were hitherto selling elements of the PC like monitors, drives and keyboards are now offering fully built-up systems.
Indian brands such as HCL, Zenith and Wipro continue to offer their tried and tested models with updated specifications. The MNCs aren't just sitting around either. In recent weeks, Hewlett Packard re-launched its range of Pavilion PCs, while simultaneously releasing some models in the slightly cheaper Compaq Presario range, for those whose budgets are in the range of Rs. 30,000 to Rs. 40,000. The Taiwan-based Acer launched its most affordable home PC, the Aspire T300, priced at just below Rs. 30,000. LG has a model in its MyPC range priced at Rs. 32,700, while Samsung's BuildurPC starts at Rs. 39,000.
The majority of these home PCs are multimedia machines - that is, they come with good 15 inch colour monitors, a CD or DVD drive and a pair of speakers. By and large, these are machines, which come pre-installed with the Windows XP (home) operating system. But for the more adventurous quite a few of these manufacturers will be happy to provide the machine with a version of Linux instead of Microsoft's Windows.
For those thinking of buying their first PC, the following is a rough guide to the bare minimum specs you should look for:
Chip: Go for a Pentium 4 clocking at least 1.8-1.9 gigahertz.
Memory: 128 MB of Random Access Memory (RAM) is the bare minimum you need these days. If you can afford to pay another Rs. 1,000, ask for 256 MB.
Hard disk: 40 GB is okay for starters, but double that will cost you just Rs. 1,500 more.
CD Drive: These budget home PCs will not give you a DVD drive, but try and go in for a CD drive with Read/Write (RW) capability. It's great for burning your own CDs.
Monitor: A 15-inch colour monitor is good enough. Flat screen (LCD) monitors are available, but these will add almost Rs. 10,000 to the price of the PC.
Internet: All home PCs come with a modem to access the Internet. These days that's always thrown in with the basic package. Also buy colour inkjet printers, which cost around Rs. 3,500.
A. VISHNU
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Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Coimbatore
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
Madurai
Thiruvananthapuram
Visakhapatnam
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