Megahertz, Gigs, Cache? Pick Grape

Shopping for a computer is the late-‘90s version of shopping for a car.

I don’t mean to imply that we should all go down to the local CompuBarn on Sunday afternoon, stroll thoughtfully in circles around the product and commence to kick the Toshibas. Nobody even does that with cars anymore. People shop for cars on the Internet and click on a button that says “virtual tire-kick.”

My point is that shopping for computers has become a primary topic of conversation among men as they stand around the old water-cooler, although of course the water-cooler has become the HP Officejet 610 All-in-One fax-printer-copier with special water-dispensing port. Not just men, either — numerous women can be found around the old water-printer using language that their mothers would never have used, such as “Ultra Hard Drive.”

Yet isn’t this the quintessential rite of modern interpersonal bonding? Isn’t this how we seek common dialogue, shared experiences, and subtle socioeconomic status-clues in this crazed cybernetic world in which we live today? No. That’s the biggest crock of baloney I’ve ever heard.

The reason that people stand around and bore each other silly with computer talk is simple: Shopping for computers is so confusing we are forced to gab about it incessantly in hopes that someone will give us some usable advice. They never do, of course, being as baffled as we are. But still, as every therapist knows, it’s healthy to talk these things out.

I have been shopping for a computer lately and I have actually uttered the following words : “So, what do you think? Should I go for the 100 megahertz system bus instead of the 66 megahertz system bus?”

The person I asked apparently didn’t know the answer because she said as far as she was concerned I could go hop on a “Greyhound” bus, and I think she added, “to Fargo.”

Well, I was obviously not going to get any help from this person, despite the fact that she is my wife. She had misconstrued the entire point of the question, by which I mean she had totally missed the 100 megahertz system bus.

I decided not even to ask her whether she thought the 512K Backside Level 2 Cache was sufficient for our needs. I’m sure she would have come up with some smart-aleck comment about how the last thing I needed was a larger Backside Cache.

So I took my computer musings elsewhere. I stood around the old fax-cooler and brought up the intriguing question of: How much storage capacity does a person really need these days? A wise and learned friend, who knows more about computers than I do by virtue of the fact that he is maybe 19, opined sagely that eight gigabytes was about right.

“That sounds good,” I said. “By the way, I’m embarrassed to ask, but what exactly is a gigabyte?”

“Oh, it’s, you know, a gig,” he said. “Yes, but how much is a gig?” I asked.

“It’s a really, really lot,” he said.

We both admitted defeat and went and looked it up and discovered that it is something on the order of a “billion.” This led me to wonder what will happen when computer storage capacity increases exponentially, which it will do in 15 minutes. Will we then have Trilobites? Aren’t those extinct? (Look it up.)

So then we discussed whether I needed a monitor with a 17-inch screen, which according to the specifications, is actually a “15.9 inch screen, viewable.” This led to a brief discussion about why they aren’t forced to call it a “15.9 inch screen.”

Tonight, I plan on chatting up all of my friends in our coed book group (The-Jane-Austen-Meets-Tom-Clancy-in-Three-Falls-Out-of-Five Book Group). With their help I hope to “work through” such other vital issues as how much RAM I need; whether the Pentium III is worth that much more than the Pentium II; and finally, whether my graphics accelerator should be ATI Rage or 3DFx Voodoo Banshee.

This is all so hard. When shopping for a car, I can at least make a choice based on the fact that I come from a long line of Chevy people. But are my people Rage people or Voodo Banshee people? I just don’t know.

However, I have figured out one solution to this problem. I am thinking seriously of buying one of those new Apple iMacs, which seem to be much easier to shop for.

There’s only one decision to make, and I plan to consult all of my advisers on this subject tonight: Do I want the grape, the blueberry or the tangerine?