The processor or CPU is the heart of any computer and is what actually does the work within the computer. This is what truly divides the PC world as Apple and Windows computers use totally incompatible chips. Windows CPU come from a number of different manufacturers, the main ones being Intel and AMD, and in a number of different formats, for example Celeron, Pentium I, II, III etc. The chip designations are a source of confusion because some chips are designed with specific purposes and all can be run at different clock speeds. The clock speed is a reflection (though not an absolute guarantee) of the speed that the processor executes instructions. It is usually stated in Mega Hertz (MHz), therefore a 650MHz is slower than a 850MHz processor. Today we are seeing the advent of processors running in excess of 1GHz.

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The NBA announced today that Chicago Bulls rookie guard *Ben Gordon* was selected the Eastern Conference Rookie of the Month for February. Gordon also earned the award for the month of January, making him the first Chicago rookie since Elton Brand (January and February 2000) to earn the award in consecutive months.

In 11 February games, Gordon averaged a rookie-best 19.1 ppg, 3.6 rpg and 2.3 apg in 26.5 mpg; he shot .438 from the field, .519 from downtown and .837 from the free throw line. He registered double-digit scoring in 10 games, scored 20 or more points six times and led the Bulls in scoring on four occasions.

Gordon also set season highs with eight free throws (vs. SAC, 02/15), six three-point field goals (vs. MIA, 02/22), eight rebounds (at MIN, 02/13) and two blocks (at CLE, 02/23).

In the Bulls’ 105-101 overtime win against Miami (02/22), Gordon came of the bench to play 25 minutes and scored a game-high 29 points (6-9 3FG). He entered the fourth quarter with nine points in 14 minutes, then heated up to score 20 points (7-11 FG, 5-6 3FG) in 11 minutes over the final quarter and overtime session, including the first eight points of overtime. His six threes that night are the most by a Bulls player this season.

At Minnesota (02/13), an 87-83 Bulls’ win, Gordon scored a team-high 21 points and grabbed eight rebounds in 27 minutes. He scored four of Chicago’s final seven points and put the game out of reach when he made two free throws with :17.8 to play. He followed that up two nights later with 24 points (11 points in the fourth quarter), three rebounds and two assists in Chicago’s 107-102 win over Sacramento. On the month, he scored 10 or more points in a quarter seven times (27 for the season), including five times in the fourth quarter (a league-high 16 times on the year).

Among NBA rookies, Gordon is second in scoring average (14.6 ppg), first in three-point field goal percentage (.447), first in free throw percentage (.845), sixth in assists per game (1.9 apg) and ninth in minutes per game (23.2 mpg).

The question you need to ask is how much this will affect your work. If you can type at speeds above 1GHz then you are superhuman, whereas some applications such as photo-retouching require alot of processing power and the speed of the processor will have an impact on how much work you can do.

Typically in adverts you will see the processor as the first line of any spec, for example:

The type and speed of processor you require is difficult and you should look at the package as a whole, for example it is not worth buying a very fast processor at the expense of having a smaller amount of RAM.

RAM stands for Random Access Memory and is what the computer uses to work with information, for example if you open a letter from a storage device (e.g. a disk) it will be copied to the machines RAM so that it can be worked on. RAM is installed into a PC using chips that contain a certain amount of RAM, which is why the amount of RAM you can install is governed by the size of chips that are compatible with your PC, i.e. if your PC accepts 64MB chips you can have configurations in multiples of 64MB, up to the maximum allowable number of chips.

As a guide 32MB is not enough, 64MB is just about acceptable for general office tasks, 128MB is recommended for most applications, 256MB is about as much as can usefully be used for many applications.

Hard Disks

Any PC needs a hard disk to store your documents and the applications that you use to create them. The bigger the disk, the more you can store. Most PCs now come with hard disks in Giga bytes (100MB) increments, for example a basic PC will have a 6GB hard disk. As a guide a letter in word format may take 20Kb to store whereas as an A4 picture could take up to 25MB of storage. The bigger the disk the more you can store. The cost of these storage devices is incremental, so only pay for what you need - and remember that if you have a huge disk and it breaks down, you will lose everything - so think about removable storage as well.

Removable storage refers to any media that can store information but can be physically removed from the computer. In the early days this was basically the floppy disk, but now a number of other options are available and some come as standard on new PCs. The most popular devices are made by iomega and are the Zip drives that come in 100MB and 250MB formats (this refers to the size of the removable disk). The advantage of these devices are that they can be used to regularly back-up your hard disk or transfer files to others (although they will also need a Zip drive). The other increasingly popular method of removable storage is the CD writer. These come from a number of manufacturers and allow you to create your own CDs that can be sent to others and used for backups. The downside of CD writers is that they are quite slow and are less flexible as you can typically only "burn" or write the CD once. There are also a number of different formats and this can lead to incompatibility with certain CD readers. The main advantage is that the media is very cheap. Typically a blank CD, purchased in bulk works out at below £1 for 650MB of storage, whereas a Zip 100MB cartridge may cost up to £7.