Buying a New PC... How Fast Should it Be?

Pick up the latest newspaper or magazine ad for a new computer and what you see can be mighty confusing. Pentium III? Celeron? Athlon? What's the difference? The answers aren't easy folks and in many stores that sell computers, the sales people don't know much more than you do. Apple makes it a lot easier for Mac fans. On the Windows side, it is more difficult because there are so many different manufacturers and basically two different companies making processors… Intel and AMD. Intel makes Celeron processors for lower priced computers…and Pentium IIIs on the higher end. At AMD, which has just upped the power of its high end Athlon and lower end new Duron processors, VP David Somo says think about what you plan to use the computer for….

"If you're someone who is just looking to access the Internet and work with emails primarily or maybe do some home financing, the AMD Duron processor and a PC that's priced around a thousand dollars or less would be the ideal choice for the customer. If you are running demanding applications like digital video and photo editing, then you want to opt for the AMD Athlon processor.