Buying a Faster Box Without Getting Boxed In Personal Tech

If you own a computer, you've probably felt the sting of technological obsolescence. Catalin Iuga is no exception. His computer, purchased nearly four years ago, has a hard time handling modern software.

So he wants to buy a speedier box.

In addition, he wants to experiment with some of the capabilities available in the latest computers. Most important, he doesn't want to pay for stuff he won't use.

"I bought the computer for $3,100, and it was the hottest thing out there," he said. "But it came with lots of features that I never use. I wish I'd gotten a computer more specialized for the stuff I need to do and not spent all that money." Iuga has the standard complaint of people who try to stretch use of a single computer out over four years: Programs can take a long time to run. But he's also frustrated because computers sold today offer nifty options that would be extremely useful to him.

Iuga is in a band called Mission One, which plays contemporary Christian music. "I want to be able to make CDs," he said. "It would be nice to be able to edit stuff on the computer and burn it onto a CD, not for commercial distribution but just to help us work on the music."

With that in mind, he'll also want a high-end speaker system. And since he's already springing for a good sound system, why not make it Surround Sound and add a DVD drive so he can watch DVDs.

As a student financial specialist at the University of Phoenix, Iuga occasionally makes presentations in PowerPoint. "I'd like to be able to add brief video clips into those presentations." So add a TV card and video editing software.

One thing to bear in mind is that Intel is going to introduce its new Pentium 4 chips this month, which means that the prices of existing chips--like the current top-of-the-line Pentium III--will come down significantly very quickly. So waiting a few weeks would be a good idea.

But we put together several boxes based on his top budget of $2,500. And we selected AMD chips over an Intel central processing unit because the price was a bit lower. Our two finalists, Gateway and Compaq, come in just about even, but Gateway gets the edge largely because it allows users to trade in a Gateway that's at least two years old and apply the trade-in price to the purchase of a new computer.

The Gateway is weak on the video card. It has a 16 MB NVIDIA TNT Vanta AGP card, compared with Compaq's 32 MB SDR GeForce2 MX. But that's probably only of interest to you if you're playing video games. Gateway will include an equivalent card for another $100.