All you need to know about PCs but are afraid to ask

If you're planning on buying an IBM-compatible personal computer - known as a PC - be careful. You have a number of important decisions before you, and you must make them in the right order.

Your first consideration is whether you want a PC at all, or would be better off with an Apple Macintosh.

These days, PCs are much more popular, but if you want to use a computer for graphics or desk-top publishing, many specialists would advise the Mac.

Presuming you do want a PC, your next choice is whether to buy direct, or from a shop. There are pros and cons for each.

Direct: There are several advantages to buying direct from the manufacturer, and Irish people have a particular edge because Gateway 2000 and Dell, two of the world's biggest direct computer companies, have their European headquarters in Ireland.

The main advantage is price; buying direct means cutting out the middleman.

Gateway and Dell advertise constantly, undercutting each other's rates on a more or less permanent basis.

You can also be reasonably sure that with a direct seller, you won't get stuck with equipment which has been lying around a shop for a few months; there's no flogging off old stuff.

"We simply don't keep finished stock," says Ms Annette Condon of Dell.

"Everything is built to order, so it's right up to date."

Another advantage is that if something goes wrong, the customer support is from the same people who sold the machine.

The main disadvantage is that for the uninitiated there is a bewildering array of choices when choosing a computer, and no one independent of the manufacturer to hold the customer's hand.

This means that if you're buying a computer for the first time, unless you're prepared to do a lot of research, you will probably have a less traumatic time if you avoid buying direct.

Another annoying thing about buying direct is that because every machine is custom-made; it means that while they take your money on the spot, the computer doesn't arrive for up to two weeks later.

In previous years, even Santa Claus himself has fallen victim to this time-lag, and been unable to produce the goods for Christmas day.

Retail: The big advantage of buying from a retail outlet is that a good shop assistant can guide first-time buyers through the process, making it far more painless.

Customers can see what they are buying, try it out there in the shop, and figure out if it feels right, before leaving the shop.

When they leave the shop, they can bring their new computer with them instead of having to wait more than a week for it to be delivered.

"And if it breaks down, you have two people to go to instead of one," says Mr Mark Lundberg, manager of the CompuStore on St Stephen's Green.

"The first port of call is the computer company's helpline, but if the customer doesn't get any joy there they come back to us. Then we ring the company and say, `look here, we are a big customer of yours, and we have to keep our own customers happy'."

Also, with a shop, traditional customers have the security of dealing with a face, someone they can shake by the hand and return to if neccessary.

The main disadvantage is price; if you know exactly what you want you are likely to save by buying direct.

Also, shops with low turnover may wind up holding older equipment that they have to sell off before buying in the most up-to-date machines.

What you want: After deciding whether to go direct or retail, you must decide what you need the computer for, and what you could possibly need it for in the future.

Will the entire famly use it, or just yourself? Will it be used to help run a small business or just for Internet access and word processing, or both?

Today's computers are in fact far more powerful than most people need, but the problem is that the newer computer programmes need a lot of power to run properly.

This suits the computer manufacturers just fine, and you can be assured that within two years, the gleaming, state-of-the-art machine you buy this month will come to be seen as antiquated. Within five years it will likely be obsolete.

Try to "future-proof" your purchase by ensuring that the machine you buy can be easily upgraded.

Ask the person who is selling you the machine what the procedure would be for increasing the speed of the chip, getting more memory, and buying a bigger hard drive.

If possible, opt for more "ram", or memory, rather than less, even if it pushes the cost up by £100 or so.

Imagine the biggest hard drive you could possibly use, and add a little - your needs could expand as software companies stuff more and more "bloatware" into their product.

Insist on "MMX technology", or its equivalent, which will give you far better use of sound and video. Also, you will need a modem, preferably one that is "built-in" to the machine.

A 14-inch screen is fine, but like a bigger television, a 15 or 17 inch monitor is better for graphics.

A new PC often means a new printer, and you should consider replacing any old black-and-white model with a colour version.

But be careful here - while today's printers start at around £130, they rise steeply in price. Don't get stung for a sparkling laser printer if you just want a home computer.