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 year 2000 brought in a new millennium and a new NASCAR Winston Cup champion. Bobby Labonte brought in a new chapter of NASCAR history as well. He became the first driver to win both the NASCAR Busch Series championship as well as the NASCAR Winston Cup championship. He also joined two-time champion and brother Terry as the only siblings to win NASCAR's most coveted prize.

NASCAR joined the ranks of the four major professional sports during the 1990's, bringing even more attention to the sport and it's champion. The 1990's will go down in history as one of the most exciting decades the sport has seen. Attendance skyrocketed, TV ratings boomed and some memorable championship moments were forged in our memories. From underdog Alan Kulwicki winning the 1992 title in dramatic fashion to Dale Jarrett joining his father Ned as a NASCAR champion, the 1990's let NASCAR and its stars take advantage of the ever-increasing spotlight. The main topic of debate, however, remains: who is the driver of the decade? Seven-time champion Dale Earnhardt captured four of his titles in the decade and even finished second in the standings in 2000, stretching his legend across the entire decade. But young upstart Jeff Gordon not only launched his career in the early 90's, but closed the lid on three championships and countless victories by the turn of the decade.

The 1980's was the decade of superstars. NASCAR's champions of the Eighties are a bridge between the stars of old and the youthful talent that is chasing championships today. Dale Earnhardt won his first three championships in the decade and sandwiched between his titles were three glorious seasons by Darrell Waltrip. Fan favorite Bill Elliott came across his first and only title in 1988, as did Rusty Wallace in 1989. And perennial points bridesmaid Bobby Allison finally broke through in 1983. Earnhardt, Waltrip, Elliott, Wallace, and Allison raced against drivers named Pearson, Petty and Yarborough, as well as against those named Gordon, Labonte, and Stewart. Three championships in the decade by Waltrip and Earnhardt are also notable as they were bringing attention to the sport through their dominance. This new attention would kick-start the evolution of NASCAR into a mainstream sport.

The Seventies were probably the most historic years in NASCAR history. Cale Yarborough won an unprecedented three consecutive NASCAR Winston Cup championships. Richard Petty won five titles during the decade, including a 722-point margin of victory over the runner-up in 1975. He won back-to-back titles during the 1970's...twice. Underdog Benny Parsons unseated The King in 1973 and gave hopes to every team in the NASCAR garage. The decade was remarkable off the track as well, as the current point system went into use in 1975 and in 1972, the RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company and its Winston brand teamed with NASCAR to build the NASCAR Winston Cup Series into what it is today. 1972 marks the first season in what we refer to as the "Modern Era of NASCAR."

The 1960's served as a stage for some of the biggest names in NASCAR history as they evolved from obscure young drivers to champions and then to superstars. The decade gave birth to seven-time champion Richard Petty, who won his first two championships in the 1960's, and David Pearson, the second-winningest driver in NASCAR Grand National (now the NASCAR Winston Cup Series) history.

Not only did the 1950's mark the first decade in NASCAR's illustrious history, the decade also saw NASCAR's pioneers emerge as champions and then as legends. The point contenders were as every bit as special then as the Jeff Gordons and Dale Jarretts of today; only true contenders found themselves in the thick of the race for the championship at season's end.

The NASCAR Strictly Stock Series (now the NASCAR Winston Cup Series) was born in 1949, and the first in a long line of NASCAR champions emerged. A former World War II aviator has the honor of being known as the first champion of NASCAR's premier division.

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.