Home Computer Kits

Tuesday, October 12th, 2010 at 5:23 PM

This entry is part 2 of 4 in the series Computer Kits

Home Computer Kits

In other lenses, we talked about gaming computer and the specifications and typical uses for them. In this lens we will discuss some of the advantages to home computer, what they are used for and why a home computer may be what you are looking for next time you are ready to upgrade your computer kits.

Uses

Home computer kits are more or less, the jack-of-all-trades; master of none. What I am referring to in this sense when I talk about computer kits, is that a home computer is meant to do a little of everything without being designated to do any one thing exceptionally well such as a gaming computer or media computer kits.

Home computer should meet a certain set of minimum requirements because a typical home computer is used for:

surfing the internet
saving pictures
home videos
watching movies
some minor gaming
music

Each one of these system processes requires a different type of system hardware to support it. A home computer should have the system hardware to support one or two of these functions simultaneously with reasonable speed and accuracy.

Specifications

A home computer should meet certain requirements, so that is has the capability to multi-task relatively well, play some video games, listen to music, etc. So what you want to do is build a computer with a decent piece of hardware in each slot of your computer kit.

Some of the requirements to look for when you are looking at a home computer kit:

RAM-4GB
Processor-Dual-Core
Graphics Card-256 MB PCI-E
Hard Drive Space-250GB
CD/DVD Drive-16x DVD ± RW

RAM

The reason we are going for a minimum of 4GB of RAM is because most current operating systems require 1GB of RAM to run on their own. This would leave three GB of RAM to be accessible for the other processes and tasks that you are using your computer for.

Processor

A dual-core processor is the minimal recommendation for the simple reason of multitasking. A single core processor does not handle multiple processes very well, and are fast becoming outdated. You will want your computer to be able to multitask somewhat, and a dual-core processor will help with the multitasking process.

Graphics Card

Your graphics card will affect how clear images look on your computer monitor. A good graphics card coupled with a high quality monitor will make pictures, movies, and even the desktop itself view at a higher quality. No one wants to take a ton of pictures and not be able to enjoy them on his or her computer later. A 256 MB dedicated graphics card will be the most entry level graphics card to choose from for a home computer.

Hard Drive

As far as hard drive goes, that will be the variable amount of permanent system storage. I would recommend between 250GB and 500GB hard drive. Media files takes up a large amount of space on your computer, so if you intend on having a lot of movies, photos and music a larger hard drive might be something to keep in mind.

CD/DVD

I would always recommend having a DVD burner in your computer. Having this ability will allow you to burn home movies, picture and important files that you do not want to lose if your computer were to ever crash on you. I recommend the DVD burner over just a CD burner because DVDs hold more information than a regular CD will.

Conclusion

Just a few things to keep in mind next time you are looking for a home computer kit, you never want to spend money on something you would never use. Gaming computer kits will be more than what is necessary for a home computer. Typically with electronics, you will pay for what you get. Whether you decide to believe that or not is up to you. If you put a little more money into a computer, you will get a little more out of it. Home computer kits are not necessarily expensive when comparing between other computer kits, but you can always put money into or take money out of it. Just always remember to expect to get what you paid for.