Expert: Bobbert - 12/14/2006

Question
what technical and non-technical factors do i need to consider when purchasing a pc?

Answer
An interesting question, by technical factors I assume you mean things related internally to the PC, and by non-technical factors I assume you mean external forces.

I'll take the non-technical factor portion of the question first, as it can be answered in much simpler terms than the technical side of purchasing a new system.

First you need to think about the purpose of the PC, what is the PC needed for? Where does it need to perform these duties? What kind of environment is that location (hot, cold, dry, wet, moving, high human traffic, high noise, high light, etc)? What software do you need to run? How much can you spend?

Questions such as those are always good to consider when shopping for a new system, because they can help you narrow down your choices, once you've got those answered then you need to think about what type of PC you'd like, do you want the portability but weaker graphics power of a laptop, or the customizability and power (but lack of mobility) of a desktop? Maybe a DTR? HTPC?

After you've narrowed that down, you can start looking inside the system, and looking at things like the central processor, graphics processor, available RAM, hard drive capacity, any other features you want? (scanner, optical media (Blu-ray? DVD burning? HD-DVD?), SLI/CrossFire, physics processor, discrete audio card, surround sound speakers, wireless HID, etc)

I can't provide a much more specific answer than the above, without more specific details, hope this helps some..

-bob