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Computer Basics by ulrikovHere in Pinoy PC, we don't only ravel in the latest updates and deals within the computer hardware industry... We aim to educate the common PC user on what's good and what's bad in the industry. Before I give you my basic guide to computer hardware, I'm going to give you a background on the situation. Questions like --- Why do you need to learn all these? What do you have to gain from all this? and Why am I teaching you all these?... will be answered as we go along.
The Users You see, currently there are three kinds of people who use the basic tool known as the computer. I categorized them into these groups - The Enthusiasts, The Mediocre-Pros, and The Newbie.So what are these different groups and what do they make up for? The Enthusiasts Primarily, these are the people who indulged themselves in computer hardware. This group come from a good range of professionals to the common hardware enthusiast. These are the computer specialists, the hardware technicians, computer engineers, PC enthusiasts and the like. Basically, these group of people have a good background on computers and know what they're into. They basically know what's good or what's bad in a component or they just have an interest in the computer genre. This constitute a merely 15% of the total computer users (20% at most). If you belong to this group, you may not read this guide ;) The Mediocre-Pros These individuals are the ones who know some facts and figures on computers but unfortunately their knowledge is insufficient and at times, half-baked. Hence the word "Mediocre". Basically, these people are the ones who "seem" to know what they're doing but in reality it's just a tip of the iceberg. What are examples of these people? These are the ones that are stuck on computer myths like -- "AMD processors are the best for gaming!" "The higher the memory of a VideoCard, the better!" (We all know that these aren't entirely true). Of the three, these are the group of people that you have to be careful with. They may lead you to dangerous situations, or worse, they may be taken advantage of a basic salesman. If you belong to this group, I suggest you finish this guide so you may have a better understanding. The Newbie This is the most common of all. They make up a large population in the computer users' population. These are basically the people who don't know anything about hardware, or if they do...it would be very limited. Newbies primarily use the computer in work or basically facebook without having an understanding on what's inside the box. Being in this group is not a bad thing... you have a lot of potential to learn and your knowledge is not tainted by myths. If you belong to this group, I suggest you continue reading this guide also. If you look at the charts, you'd see that a large percentage fall upon the Newbie group. Now let's go on to the questions I've stated before.
Why do you need to learn all these things? Well, for one thing...this here is FREE. But seriously, you need to learn all these things so you may have a good knowledge in this field. Believe it or not, 70% of the computer technicians I know will rip their clients off once they know that their client is a Newbie. Yes, they will do that! They either take out your components and swap them with defective ones or they charge you with an insane amount for a simple tweak. Now, with this crash course tutorial that I'm making, you'd certainly avoid that in the future. What do you have to gain from all these? Knowledge... later to be used in Protective and Smart decisions. Why am I teaching you all these? Simple. I don't want you to get ripped off! I had a bad experience before wherein a computer technician ripped me off with some components of my computer without me even knowing it until a year has passed...I learned my lesson and I prompted to educate myself on these things. I don't want that happening to you! So through education, you, my readers will stop the practices done by opportunistic computer technicians. I don't have a degree in computer stuffs but I certainly know a thing or two from experience, research and basically pure interest. "Liberating the world through Education..." --DB After that common introduction, I think it's time we proceed to the computer basics proper. This guide is designed for newbies, so I'll try to use as much as possible less technical words. I'll try to put this into a layman's point of view and hopefully you'll understand what I mean. I've designated the topics into different chapters so it may be easy for us to go along. I will also point out some tips and hints along the way. NEXT PAGE: Computer Anatomy The Chapters: 1. Computer Anatomy 2. Processor 3. Motherboard 4. Memory 5. Videocard 6. Hard Disk Drive 7. Power Supply 8. Overclocking |