The 7 Mistakes We’ll Help You Avoid When Buying a Computer

After serving over 100 companies around the Toronto area, we’ve seen lots of mistakes people make when buying new equipment. We’re here to help you avoid them and ensure you make as cost effective a purchase as possible.

Here are some things we recommend when buying your new computer:

Avoid Vista - most new computers come with Windows Vista installed. Only some have the option of downgrading to Windows XP. We strongly recommend sticking with XP in a small business environment. It makes everyone’s life easier because Vista continues to have bugs that cause networking issues and various other annoyances.

Know what the computer will be doing - it’s much easier to get the right computer and make a cost-effective decision if you know exactly what the machine will be used for. Standard staff users have much different needs than someone doing a lot of design or video editing work.

Don’t forget the software - we find many people think MS Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook etc.) comes with your operating system. It doesn’t. You have to buy it and it can add around $300 to the cost of your purchase. It will be less expensive to buy Office with your computer than buying it on its own later.

Get more than you need - the processor, hard drive and memory that looks like a lot now won’t look that way in a year. It never hurts to get a little extra to make sure your productivity and efficiency is as high as possible.

Know your price - if you can have a budget in mind it will help you. There are so many options out there that it is much more effective if you look for the best machine available for say $1,000 or $1,500.

Be wary of the deal - Dell and other computer manufacturers have great marketing campaigns that grab your attention with their low prices. Be wary because when you look at the details they often have a home operating system (not a business one) and don’t include essentials like MS Office. Both of these issues will limit the functionality of your computer.

Don’t force yourself to buy a new computer - there’s no point in buying a new computer if you don’t have the proper budget for it or if you don’t need to. Often you can vastly improve the performance of your existing computer by adding a $30 piece of memory to it and cleaning up add-ons and spyware.

Still lost? Call us at 1-866-483-2638 and we’ll get you on the right track. We are an authorized reseller of IBM, Lenovo, HP, Microsoft, Dell, Toshiba and just about any other manufacturer you can think of. We’ll ensure you get the right equipment at an affordable price.

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