Expert: Bobbert - 6/16/2008

Question
my son is 16 years old & plans on a attending college with hopes of a career in the medical field.  he has outgrown the one family computer & we are ready for him to have his own pc that he can use for school work, communication with others (email & IM), making videos & projects with good graphics, and probably most important to him, great resolution of graphics for playing computer games,and all this with also a very good memory size.  we are not that familiar with the meriad of pc choices available, but he would prefer an apple imac.  do you think this would be a good choice for all the preceeding preferences listed?  we are prepared to spending up to $2,000 for a pc system if it will be able to last him for 5-8 years, if that's at all possible in this ever changing tech world.  thanks so much for your expertise advise!!  alex & his mom margaret

Answer
No, 5-8 years is impossible for a system to "last", the hardware may physically survive, however in terms of keeping up or even staying semi-current, 5-8 years is a pipe dream, standard effective life of a system is 2-3 years, with an Apple (due to their software development model) you can look at *maybe* extending that to 4 years, but only with Apple software.

As far as buying an Apple, I wouldn't honestly suggest it, in terms of price/performance, and in terms of what you'd like to do with it, OS X doesn't support DirectX, which is required for ~90% of all games (yes there are ports to Apple, they cost quite a bit, and are generally a year or so behind the curve). The other reason I wouldn't suggest Apple IS the price/performance thing, for roughly $2000 you'll get hardware which will compare to a roughly $750 Dell or Hewlett-Packard (and the only reason it costs more is the Apple name).

Given the age range we're talking about, at roughly 16, I'm guessing the user is roughly between his second and third years of secondary school, personally I'd buy a ~$800-$1200 system now, with a little bit better than mid-range graphics and processing power, from a company such as Dell Computer, that'll last for 2-3 years without many problems, now, in 2-3 years it won't be keeping up (at all) with games (honestly in 18 months it'll start to show age, any system will fall prey to this though). Then I'd re-evaluate the situation for University, given that most schools have a requirement (some require a laptop just to register for classes, some require a specific hardware vendor, some require specific software load-outs, etc) for what computer to purchase.

As far as grabbing a Dell or similar box now, I'd suggest going with Windows XP Professional if at all possible, and a decent graphics processor to keep up with gaming (say GeForce 8600GT, or 8800GT, 8600GTS is also an option, as well as 9600GSO or 9600GT). Another brand to check out would be Gateway, and their FX line.

-bob