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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Philadelphia 76ers President and General Manager Billy King announced May 23 that Maurice Cheeks has been hired as the 21st head coach of the Philadelphia 76ers and that Jim O'Brien has been relieved of his head coaching duties.

Cheeks arrives in Philadelphia after three-plus seasons as head coach of the Portland Trail Blazers. He recorded a mark of 162-139 (.538) in Portland, the fourth-highest win total in Blazers history. During his time in Portland, the Blazers reached the NBA Playoffs twice, and his 2002-03 squad tied for second in the Pacific Division with a 50-32 record.

He joined the Blazers on June 27, 2001, after serving seven seasons as an assistant coach for the 76ers. Cheeks worked under head coaches John Lucas (1994-96), Johnny Davis (1996-97), and Larry Brown (1997-2001). In 2000-01 under Brown, Cheeks helped guide the 76ers to a record of 56-26 (.683) and a spot in the NBA Finals.

Cheeks, 48, logged an impressive 15-year NBA career, spending 11 seasons in Philadelphia. The four-time All-Star (1983, ‘86, ’87, ’88) helped guide the 76ers to 10 playoff appearances, including a World Championship in 1983. In 133 career playoff games, he averaged 14.4 points, 6.9 assists, and 3.4 rebounds while shooting 51.2 percent from the field. Cheeks is also a five-time NBA All-Defensive Team honoree.

*Maurice Cheeks' Head Coaching Resume*

A native of Chicago, Ill., Cheeks averaged 11.1 points, 6.7 assists and 2.1 steals in 1,101 career games while shooting 52.3 percent from the field and 79.3 percent from the charity stripe. He retired in 1993 as the league’s all-time leader in steals, and was fifth on the career assists list at that time. Currently, he ranks fourth in steals and eighth in assists all-time. Cheeks had his No. 10 76ers jersey retired on Feb. 6, 1995.

The 1978 product of West Texas State was a four-year starter and three-time team MVP in college. He finished his collegiate career third on the Buffalos’ all-time scoring list, averaging 16.8 points per game. Cheeks was selected in the second round of the 1978 NBA Draft (36th overall pick) by the 76ers.

O'Brien was hired as the 20th coach of the 76ers on April 21, 2004 and posted a record of 43-39 in 2004-05. Overall, in five seasons as an NBA head coach, O’Brien recorded a mark of 182-158 (.535), including a record of 139-119 (.539) with the Boston Celtics from 2000-04. O’Brien has served on the coaching staffs at seven different universities, including head coaching positions at Wheeling Jesuit College (1982-87) and University of Dayton (1989-94). He owns a 135-156 (.464) record at the collegiate level in 10 seasons as a head coach. No decision has been reached on O’Brien’s staff at this time.

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.