Buying your next (or first) PC: What matters now? Available to Purchase

There's never been a better time to buy a PC, whether it's your first system, a replacement, or an addition. Values have improved enormously in the past year, and you can now get reasonably good values even from the traditionally high‐priced vendors. That doesn't mean you should automatically buy the best‐known brand. You'll still do much better by evaluating your needs, understanding what's important in a PC (and how to look for it), and looking over the marketplace carefully. If you're reading Library Hi Tech back‐to‐front, skip to Looking Back #1: it provides important background for this article. In this article the author discusses various aspects of PC purchasing in 1993, focusing on what matters now. He discusses the numbers that count, critical aspects of a system that are sometimes ignored in reviews, and the advantages and disadvantages of bundling. He offers some notes on brand names and suppliers, but cautions that completely safe purchases are nearly impossible. The article concludes with notes from the literature received between October and December 1992.