"Mo pas conner ki pou aster, ki capav gagner pou Rs 25,000 missier"
" Eski gagne ene Pentium 3 800 avec sa avec so l'imprimante ek so internet"

In the last days, many PC vendors have heard such expressions, as many shook their head with despair.
The aim of this article is not to promote a particular brand or another but to show how equilibrium is a necessity in a computer system.

Step 1
The first step to do is to evaluate how much one can put on a computer system. How much money do ya have?  We'll conservatively put it at Rs 25,000 Vat Inclusive. Why? Because it nicely fits into the DBM loan bracket. On a 4 year contract, you'll have Rs 586 per month to pay, less than Rs 20 per day and 80cts per hour and.... OK, I'll stay calm !

Step 2
Then choose what you'll do with your computer system. Internet, Word Processing, Spreadsheet... Just list them. It will help latter on as you'll see. There are 4 categories of jobs that you might want your computer to do (in this price bracket):
(1) Plain Small Office work (including some Internet) : it is more important for you to have a little of everything than all of only one thing.
(2) Game Playing : The eyes are the king. Accessories are very important.
(3) CD-Writing : A CD-Writer is a most welcomed instrument for your writing (and ripping) purposes
(4) Internet afficionados : A powerful modem, together with something called a video camera are also most welcomed.

A last thing to bear in mind. What software are you going to run on your machine?
What Operating system will you use? As strange that it may seem, I would recommend Windows 95 OSR 2 to everyone, especially for the above since by way of experience, this release seems to be particularly stable especially when compared to Windows 98.
As for other software like your office suite, I would recommend you using a generation older packages, since they almost always offer more stability and compatibility. Moreover, people are more used to them anyway since they are present for a longer time. Last thing, they don't gobble up your system resources and **will** run a lot faster on today's machine.

CPU
For all systems, I would recommend using AMD K6-2 500 series. Although it might seem somewhat OLD now, it still offers plenty of Juice for its age, especially if you put it with Windows 95. Don't Forget that Windows 95 was out in .... 1995 and that, at that time, it was supposed to run on 486 and early first generation pentiums. So you can easily guess how quick it will fly, especially when you add in the 64 Mb PC-100 memory to it. Aargh ! Don't forget the fan please... A faster machine won't help you type with both hands or learn Microsoft Excel faster, and don't even think about buying a machine with the slightest idea of getting it upgraded later on. Upgrades almost always bring a bunch of problems and nowadays enginners don't even think about making an upgrade-proof machine.

Motherboard
As for the motherboard, ask for an integrated motherboard (PC Chips M598LMRT) to your Vendor and ask him to configure your onboard video to take only 4 Mb of memory. On the other hand, the game player will ask for the PC Chips M587LMR which integrates a RIVA TNT2 M64 together with 32 Mb RAM, this should suffice of most games.

Storage
A 10.2 Gb Hard disk will be an ideal entry level for most users together with the ol' floppy disk drive and the CD-ROM Drive, anything above 24x can play a VCD as smoothly as it can be, in fact the faster the CD-ROm the more it can be prone to scratches and defects on the CD-ROM surface. Anyway ask for the slowest version which should make you keep some rupees. The CD-Writer guy can safely choose any of the market CD-Writer. A 4x4x32 CD-Rom Writer should perfectly fit the Bill and make you smarter.

Others
The sound card, the network card and the modem are all embedded on the Motherboard, which makes you still save some rupees (again). Opt for a 15" monitor which is the best thing that you can get in this range of price. A brand name is usually better than a no brand as all you could have guessed. Other stuffs to be included are 2 USB ports, a keyboard and a mouse (very personal, I like the clicky keyboard most... Don't worry about the number of keys or buttons on the rodent and the keyboard, it should not matter at all), headphone and microphone, a pair of speakers and a mouse pad ;) Last thing is the casing but this also is a personal trait.. I HATE those colourful, round shaped casing. They seem too much Girlie (Naaayyy I prefer the blue, rasperry and you Sally, what color you like ***). Plain old beige, carre, carre suits me more.

As for the other peripherals
1. The Plain user can opt for a printer and a scanner.
2. The game player shall look for a better speaker set as well as a joystick and a joypad.
3. The CD-Writer shall look for nothing (a spindle of blank CD perhaps ?)
4. The internet afficionados will be quite happy with a Webcamera...

Don't underestimate the importance of the guarantee. Another article will soon come on this.

So let's round up with the table below

Conclusion
For under Rs 25,000, you have quite a computer which, though slower than 800 Mhz beasts available for 30% more money, will suit you more than THEY do. Also don't forget that these are only budget machines and should be treated as such. This article was brought to you on a Pentium Machine in less than 1 hour;) Quite fast by any means. Write to [email protected] for any comments on this article.