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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*2004-05 SIGNIFICANT ACHIEVEMENTS*:

• The Grizzlies set numerous records on November 12 against Golden State, including: Lowest field goal percentage allowed (27.5%), lowest field goal percentage allowed in a half (23.4%), total rebounds (62), defensive rebounds (48), blocks (17), blocks in a half (13), blocks in a quarter (9). Pau Gasol also tied an individual and Grizzlies franchise record with five blocks in a half.

• The Grizzlies had a franchise record 17 blocks on November 12 versus Golden State, also the most in the NBA in a single game this season.

• Memphis set two records in a 118-113 loss in Seattle on November 14. The Grizzlies put up 42 points in the second quarter, the most ever posted in the second quarter in team history, and also the most ever scored in a single quarter.

• With seven assists on November 14 in Seattle, Jason Williams became the Grizzlies’ franchise leader with 1,676. The old record was held by current Sacramento King, Mike Bibby, at 1,675.

• With four assists on November 22 versus the San Antonio Spurs, Jason Williams eclipsed 3,000 for his career.

• The Grizzlies victory over the Lakers in their game on December 20 marked the first time that they have ever taken a game on the road against the Lakers. The Grizzlies held L.A. to 24 points in the second half, tying the franchise mark for opponents’ points in a half, and also held the Lakers in check by allowing only 23 field goals on the night – setting a new franchise record at the time for fewest field goals made by an opponent in a single game.

• Pau Gasol was selected as the NBA Player of the Week for games played December 27 through January 2, playing in three games over that span while averaging 23.6 ppg, 7.7 rpg, 1.3 bpg and 3.3 apg in 31.3 mpg.

• With 31 points and four blocks against the Pacers on January 11, Pau Gasol eclipsed both the 5,000-point and 500-block plateaus for his career. Gasol became the tenth fastest player to have reached the combined milestones since records have been kept beginning in 1973-74.

• With six points against the Pacers on January 11, Lorenzen Wright surpassed 5,000 points for his career.

• The Grizzlies connected on a franchise record 13 three-pointers in a victory over Milwaukee on January 15, including five from Jason Williams in the third quarter, also a franchise record.

• Pau Gasol’s streak of consecutive games with double figures in scoring came to an end on January 19, with a five-point performance in a Grizzlies’ victory over Phoenix. Gasol’s streak of 103 games was, at the time, the second longest active streak in the league (behind only Kevin Garnett) and stands as the second longest streak in franchise history (behind Shareef Abdur-Rahim (110 games).

• Jason Williams dished out a season-high 15 assists (0 turnovers) on January 21 against Denver, also the most assists by a Grizzlie in a single game this season. Williams’ 15-assist effort without a single turnover marked the first and only time in the NBA this season that a player has posted 15 or more assists without registering a turnover in a single game.

• Shane Battier scored the 3,000th point of his career on February 13 against Indiana.

• The Grizzlies’ 30-point win on Apr. 6 over Toronto was not only the team’s largest margin of victory this season, but also the franchise record for largest margin of victory on the road. The previous mark for largest margin of victory this season had been 29 in a victory over Golden State on November 12, while the team’s old mark for largest margin of victory on the road came in a 27-point win over Dallas on Nov. 8, 2000, when the team resided in Vancouver.

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.