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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Bobcats Extend Qualifying Offers To Four Players The Bobcats have extended qualifying offers to Gerald Wallace, Jason Kapono, Keith Bogans and Matt Carroll, and exercised the fourth-year option on Emeka Okafor's contract, keeping the 2005 NBA got milk? Rookie of the Year in Charlotte through the 2007-08 season.

2005-06 Bobcats Dance Team Selected The 2005-06 Charlotte Bobcats Dance Team was chosen on June 26 during auditions at the Charlotte Coliseum.

Bobcats / Sting Youth Basketball Camps The Charlotte Bobcats and Sting will be a part of three outstanding basketball camps for children this summer.

C-SET To Cease Operations

C-SET, the 24-hour regional sports and entertainment network created to serve local programming interests in North and South Carolina, will cease operations effective June 30, 2005.

Foodservice Program Announced For New Arena

The Bobcats have partnered with Charlotte food consultant John Sergi, and industry leading-Levy Restaurants, Compass Group, the Americas Division’s sports and entertainment strategic partner to develop a diverse and customer-focused food and beverage program for the New Charlotte Arena.

NBA and NBPA Reach Agreement In Principle

The NBA and the National Basketball Players Association announced that they have reached an agreement in principle on the key items of a new six-year collective bargaining agreement.

An Inside Look At The New Charlotte Arena

With the opening of the New Charlotte Arena just over four months away, BobcatsBasketball.com takes you on a behind-the-scenes tour of the new home of the Bobcats and Sting.

Season In Review: Gerald Wallace

BobcatsBasketball.com's season in review series continues with Gerald Wallace, who thrilled fans with his high-flying offense and established himself as a defensive presence on the court.

Emeka Okafor Named Rookie Of The Year

Bobcats forward Emeka Okafor was named the 2004-05 NBA got milk? Rookie of the Year as voted on by a panel of league sportswriters and broadcasters in the United States and Canada. He received 77 of 126 possible first-place votes in winning the award.

Okafor's Award A Victory For Both Team & City

Backstage With Bernie: Season In Review In

a two-part series, General Manager & Head Coach Bernie Bickerstaff talks about the team's inaugural season, plans for the summer and the New Charlotte Arena. Part one: April 22, 2005 Part two: April 25, 2005 Game-by-game season recap

Brezec To Participate In Basketball Without Borders

Primoz Brezec will participate in Basketball without Borders, the league’s premiere international basketball and community relations outreach program, at La Ghirada Sports Facility in Treviso, Italy from July 28-31.

Bobcats Help Build Playground, Read To Students

The Bobcats players joined Charlotte Business Strengthening America on April 14 to help build a playground for the students at Thomasboro Elementary School. The players and member of the dance team also participated in a Reading Timeout with the kids in the after-school program.

Get Closer To The Bobcats In 2005-06

Deposits are now being accepted for new Bobcats season ticket holders for the 2005-06 season at the New Charlotte Arena. Fans who wish to reserve new season tickets can do so by making a non-refundable deposit of $250.00 per seat.

New Charlotte Arena seating chart

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.