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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/On Eddie Jordan and the coaching staff:/ “Eddie did a very good job and his staff did a very good job. They had to mix and match different players in different situations and he kept the team together all year. He kept them competitive and we got to the playoffs. We won a playoff round for the first time in 23 years, which is significant. We had our best record in 26 years. We had a lot of firsts this year and Eddie had a huge hand in that. He gave them confidence. He found ways to make up for the injuries and he plays an entertaining brand of ball.”

/On the season:/

“This has been an outstanding year for us as far as learning, growing and establishing something that we are going to try to do again in the future. We wanted to establish ourselves as a playoff contender, establish the MCI Center as a very good home court, and show that we have some very solid pieces in place. Our players are competitive. They like to win and they want to win.”

/On off-season priorities:/ “You always look to improve. We have opportunities that will come our way -- what those opportunities are at this time, we don’t know. We are going to explore our options. I have said all along that what we are trying to do here is build a solid foundation, put some pieces together that we can build with and build around. I think that we have been able to establish that here. We have some of those pieces in place. We’ll sit with our coaches and our staff in the next week or two and evaluate what we need and what we want to get. Obviously, we don’t know which one of our free agents will be back. They all have the right to explore the market, but we’ll fill the holes that we need to fill on this roster with solid players.”

/On improving the team:/

“The first and most effective way to improve always is internally. We still have a lot of very young players and player development is going to be extremely important again this summer. I think our players last summer showed that they are very hard workers, they are diligent and they came back this season improved both individually and as a team. I think we are heading in the right direction and our future is bright.”

/On his expectations for next season:/ “Our expectations are that we want to get back to the playoffs. We want to improve. We are still a young team and I think that we are going to do that. The only expectation that we put on ourselves is to work hard, to get better and continue to grow. But, it’s always good to raise the bar.”

/On the Wizards’ success:/

“It didn’t happen by accident. We have to give our players and coaches a lot of credit. Our players worked really hard in the off-season and came in with a good frame of mind. They competed hard on a nightly basis and our coaches used them well. We’ve faced a lot of adversity this year with all the injuries we’ve had. We probably had as many injuries or more than anybody in the league, but we found ways to get the victory and we found ways to improve and be competitive as the season went along and hopefully this year we’re going to work just as hard or harder than we did last year. I think we’ve really learned from this playoff experience, not only the playoffs itself but the playoff run to get into the playoffs -- the last 10 to 15 games where your jockeying for position. Every game becomes more important and the intensity level goes up and the physical play goes up. Of course, when you get to the playoffs it’s a whole other ballgame. I think our players responded well to that and I think we’ll grow from that experience.”

/On Kwame Brown:/ “Kwame is still a part of our team. He is a restricted free agent. He’s a talented player – seven feet tall and athletic. We’ll sit down and evaluate the situation and see where we are with him. There is no saying that he won’t be back with us. We’ll explore all of our options. We’ll meet with him and his representatives and see where we are. There is a possibility that he will be back with us. He is a free agent and he has the right to explore his options as all free agents do, but he is a restricted free agent and we have the right to match any offer for him.”

/On Larry Hughes:/

“Larry is a very big part of what we’re doing but he is also a free agent – an unrestricted free agent. He has the right to negotiate. That’s the way the system works. I’m sure he’ll explore all of his options. But he has let it be known that he wants to be back here, and we’re on record as saying that we want to have Larry back. He is a big part of what we’re doing and he fits in very well with Gilbert (Arenas) and Antawn (Jamison) and the rest of our players. At the appropriate time we’ll sit down with him and his representatives to try to work something out to bring him back.”

/On Peter John Ramos:/ “Player development is very important to us, and Peter Ramos is one of our younger players that we feel has potential. He’s in a unique situation because he’s on the Puerto Rican National Team in the 21 and under World Championships, so he’ll be getting a lot of international experience and getting his feet wet under those conditions.”

/On Juan Dixon and Steve Blake:/

“Juan has had some real good moments for us. Steve has played well. It’s been a frustrating year for Steve because he missed so many games early in the year and his minutes weren’t consistent. But he’s proven that he’s a solid NBA guard. He can play on this level. Juan has had some real big moments, so we’re not closing the door on anybody. We’ll talk with those players. We’ll talk with their representatives at the appropriate time and we’ll see where we are with that.”

/On Wizards’ fans:/ “I think the fans here are very knowledgeable. They understand the game and all they look for is good effort out there. If you go out there and produce, the fans will be on your side and I think they proved that this year.”

/On the team’s defense:/

“That’s one area that Eddie (Jordan) has mentioned that he really wants to focus on and improve on for next year. We all realize that we have to show improvement in that and get better at if we want to continue to be a playoff contender and make some noise in the playoffs. That will be addressed in the off-season and obviously next year.”

/On making the playoffs:/ “Our goal was to be a Playoff team. Our goal was to make the Playoffs so it wasn’t a complete surprise. I thought that if we played up to our abilities and we committed ourselves to the team goal than we could make the playoffs. We were fortunate to do so. Our players stepped it up even more and we were able to win a playoff round. That experience is invaluable. This is something that we learned from and something that we can grow with.”

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.