Do You Really Need New Computer for your Home Business? Maybe Not!

by Maxine on May 16, 2010

You’re about to start a home business and you’ll be marketing online, right?   You’ll need to know whether your present equipment (computer etc) is up for the task, and if not, what to do about it.

You’ll want to ensure that you can use all the tools available to you right now, (video, audio and graphic capabilities) to get your home business off to a great start.

Firstly, check to see what your present system properties are by clicking on Start, Control Panel, System.

You need at least:

Intel(R) Core (TM) 2 CPU

Pentium 4 will suffice for now, but it won’t be long before you’ll need to upgrade.  The upgrades have been, in this order, Dual Core, Quad Core, i3 Core, i5 Core, with i7 the Ferrari of the CPU’s at the present time.

1.67 GHz  – (3GHz recommended) – this is your processor speed.

The media (video etc) capabilities we have today require more speed to run, and everyone is using video in their marketing efforts (or soon will be). You can’t increase your processor’s speed but what you can do is add more RAM to your computer.  RAM gives your processor more room to work with.  Large programmes take up a lot of RAM which slows down your processing speed.

1 GB of RAM (2 GB recommended) – this is your computer’s “memory”.

The easiest way to get more memory space is to add more RAM.

Everything is working fine, then you add photo-editing software, surf to a graphically intense Web site, install a game, and suddenly your computer can’t keep up. One sign that your computer is under stress is when the drive light flickers like mad (that’s the red light on the front of your computer).

As you’re getting your equipment into good shape for your home business, and you’ll be using video conferencing, video streaming, or video in some shape of form (won’t you?) you’ll be wanting to to ensure your computer is up to the job now, rather than having to upgrade too soon down the track.

The amount of RAM you need depends on the operating system you are using. For systems running Windows 7, Windows Vista, or Windows XP, you will need the minimum recommended amount, but more is often better, depending on your needs. If you just use your PC for surfing the Internet and writing letters, you need 512 MB to 1 GB. For more RAM-intensive programs, such as games or photo editing, or if you like to use a lot of applications at the same time, such as desktop publishing and video rendering, more than 1 GB is recommended. Each program should come with system requirements that show both the minimum RAM needed to run the program, and the amount of RAM needed for its best performance.

RAM modules can be purchased in a variety of sizes.

{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }

Michael Vidale May 17, 2010 at 2:46 am

Nice looking site Max , great work ! Cheers , Michael

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Maxine May 17, 2010 at 3:06 am

Thanks Michael.. getting there. You know what it’s like..a plumber never get’s round to fixing his leaking tap!

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