CHOOSING A COMPUTER

Susan Heinemann posed for the Sony Digital Mavica, a camera slightly larger than the floppy disk inside it, at Staples.

Those of us who have taken the plunge into computerdom have encountered the quandary. Eugene Staten III faced it a few days ago:

What do I buy?

Brand-name desktop models, sans monitor and printer, can be had for less than $1,000. So do you buy now, or wait a few months, when prices likely will be hundreds of dollars less?

Or do you scrape the piggy bank and buy that $2,000 computer with a potentially longer shelf life?

Staten, a sales associate at Radio Shack in Cape Girardeau, bought the cheapie. For $949, Staten got a 233-megahertz machine with 32 megabytes of random access memory and a hard disk with 2.1 gigabytes of space.

"Just a year and a half ago, you would have paid $2,500 for something like that," said David Dickey, electronics department manager at Staples in Cape Girardeau.

If, like Staten, you'll be using your computer primarily for browsing the Web and creating documents, odds are the cheap machine is fine.

Unless you are editing big photo files or playing the newest games, the top-of-the-line machine is probably more than you need. And the bottom-of-the-line unit will let you do both those things, just more slowly.

"I would stay away from the really high-end systems unless you're just a real power user and you absolutely have to have that speed," said Youn Gonzales, Internet service manager at Clas Computers in Cape Girardeau. "The price-to-performance ratio on those just isn't quite there."

For another $1,000, Staten could have bought a 300-megahertz Pentium II machine with twice the RAM and a hard disk with nearly six times the space as the unit he got. The more expensive machine also has the new digital video disc drive, instead of the standard compact disc drive.

As far as processor power, the difference is not as great as one might guess.

A PC World magazine test found that the fastest 300-megahertz Pentium II model took about 22 minutes to complete a benchmark involving six business applications; a 200-megahertz unit half as expensive took about 26 minutes.

There are a few snags bargain hunters need to be aware of. Low-end models often omit the so-called Level II cache that is standard on more expensive models and is built into every current Pentium II system.

Although the hard disk drives in less expensive machines hold less data than in more expensive models, you can eventually add new ones if you buy a machine with room for extra drives. Also, try to buy a unit that will let you use the RAM you have when you want to add more.

"The two things that I would concentrate on most are RAM and hard drive space," Gonzales said. "And the larger monitors definitely are nice."

Buy the best monitor you can afford. Even 17-inch screens are affordable now.

And if you are worried that buying a machine now will leave you with the outdated Windows 95 operating system, don't worry. Some manufacturers are offering free upgrades to Windows 98 when it is released later this month; the rest will do it for no more than $30.

Lastly, if you plan to buy a cheapie, you probably will want to buy a unit that is expandable. With internal slots and bays, you can add network connections, television tuners, hard drives, photo scanners and other peripherals.

A final bit of advice: Two years ago, I bought a 120-megahertz machine with 16 megabytes of RAM and a 1.2-gigabyte hard disk. I have since upgraded my modem to a faster model.

For what I use the machine for -- word processing and the Web -- the machine is still fine. In all likelihood, anything you buy today will be twice as fine.