My rules for buying a new computer for genealogy

In my recent post
on buying a new computer I talked about some of the factors that go
into choosing a system for home (or small business) use. Here are my
rules or at least the ones I have adapted over the years in purchasing
dozens of computers:

Rule No. 1: Always buy the fastest computer you can reasonably afford.

This is a pretty simple rule. Various computer systems are rated by the
speed of the processor and the speed the information is moved internally
(Bus Speed). Usually, within a short time a new processor is
introduced, there are a number of independent organizations who rate the
speed and compare the new processor to previous models. You can make a
pretty good guess as to how fast the computer is going to operate by the
speed marks. There is one catch, you cannot compare two different
processors on speed alone. For example, you cannot compare an AMD chip
with an Intel chip. To this end, there are also speed tests using common
software, such as the time it takes to open a certain file in Photoshop
or some other program. After careful research, you can get a good idea
of the speed comparisons of the various computer chips currently
available. If you are so inclined, you can look at a CPU Benchmark test
at PassMark Software. This is not an endorsement and yes, I know there are a dozen (probably more) different tests out there.

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