When buying a desktop computer there are several things to consider. First, think about your budget. How much are you willing to spend? Once upon a time a midrange computer would cost about a thousand pounds. Nowadays that would get you a top of the range gaming PC at Dell. A mid range PC will cost you about £500 whereas £300 will get you a machine suitable for most every day tasks.

Secondly, think about what you are going to be using your PC for. If its email and web browsing a bargain basement PC will do. For gaming, you'd need to think about the processor and the graphics card.

Here's a lowdown on the options on the Dell site.

Processor. The core of your computer is the processor. Generally, the more expensive a processor, the better it is. The higher the clock speed the better too. The basic hierarchy is Intel Celeron < Pentium Dual Core < Core 2 Duo < Core 2 Quad Core. At the time of writing, Intel Processors are much better value than their AMD counter parts. This may change with future generations of chips but at the moment Core 2 Duo chips beat AMD X2.

A Celeron will do for basic use. For the price though, Core 2 Duos provide the best value. Quad cores are coming down in price so will one day become the mainstream.

Operating system. Most machines will come with some windows flavour. The cheaper machines will come with Vista Home basic. Vista Home Premium is the standard OS for home machines. Home Premium has some nice features but for email and web browsing the Home basic version will do fine.

Support Services. I tend to recommend keeping this on the basic level. With the price of PCs dropping all the time, in 2 years time, if your PC does break then you can buy one that's double the speed for half the price.

Monitors. All new monitors are TFT (I am ignoring any CRT monitors). The bigger the monitor the better. A bigger screen size means you can fit more on and multitask more effectively or just watch things in a bigger size. Please note its the screen resolution that counts. A 20 inch monitor with a 1650x1050 resolution will fit exactly the same amount of windows as a 22 inch monitor.

Memory. The more the better. Do not upgrade on the Dell site. Its better to buy memory separately and install it yourself. Even if you are not confident about opening up your PC, it would be cheaper to buy it separately and pay someone to fit it for you. Aim to get 2 gigabytes (2048MB).

Hard Drive. The bigger the better. There is no need to upgrade this on the Dell site. You can buy external hard drives for less than the upgrades cost.

Graphics card. If you are not planning on gaming then the standard on board cards will do fine. If you are gaming, then you will need to upgrade the card. Its usually better to buy this externally and fit it yourself. Graphics cards are updated frequently. The best place to look for graphics card advice is Here Do not try to put anything too powerful in your machine as your power supply may not be able to handle it.

Optical Drive. The standard nowadays is a DVD writer. No need to upgrade this. You'll find that you rarely use the optical nowadays.

KeyBoard/ Mouse. Keep these as standard. Any fancy options can be purchased separately.

Office Software. If you are planning on using your PC for business use you will be best off getting the OEM version from DELL. If you are student you can get the Ultimate Edition of Office for a fraction of the price. http://www.software4students.co.uk/

Please note this article was written March 2008. The general principles will remain the same but prices, processors, cards etc will change. This is a cut down version of what to look for. Please use the contact form to contact us for up to date advice.