Sayonara 486/P50, hello dimension V celeron 400 - Dell Computer Corp's new product

Business Economics, Oct, 1999 by John H. Qualls

The arrival of the Internet in Saudi Arabia finally motivated me to replace my old Dell 486/P50. It would not support the latest web browsers from Netscape and Microsoft, nor would it run the latest versions of Word, Excel, and EViews. On my last trip home, I ordered a new Dell Dimension V Celeron 400 and shipped it over to Riyadh. It has "only" 64 meg of RAM and "only" a 9.1 gig hard drive, but on the other hand it "only" cost $1100. It is all the computer that I need at this point in time.

I debated getting a DVD-ROM instead of a CD-ROM, but decided on a 40x CD-ROM. The DVD-ROM drive was only about $60 more, but it used software decoding. To get hardware decoding cost another $100. The sales representative with whom I talked when I ordered the computer advised against the software decoding, saying that I would not be satisfied with the reading speed, and that the 40x CD-ROM would actually read CDs faster. To my knowledge, there are no business database applications that use a DVD-ROM drive, so it would be useless to have at this point in time. Evidently, the main application for DVD-ROM drives is watching movies on DVDs, and I have better things to do with my PC.

I got a Dell 17[inches] M780 monitor, and it is fantastic. It has a .26 dot pitch, which gives it great resolution. After all of these years squinting at 13[inches], 14[inches], and 15[inches] monitors, it is a welcome addition. I had briefly considered getting a Dell 19[inches] monitor, which got rave reviews in a recent issue of PC World, but I had doubts about being able to ship it over to Saudi Arabia. Luckily, I did not, because it would not have fit on the desk top in my villa.

I also got a US Robotics V90 X2 56k modem with "telephony." It comes with a microphone and will allow me some day to make phone calls via the Internet, if I can figure some way around the firewalls that the local Internet Service Providers have set up.

Finally, it came with Windows 98 installed. I love 98 and would recommend it to all of you who are using 95. There is a little-noticed option that I particularly like, which gives me the ability to single click on the icons on my desktop to execute them. No, I'm not talking about having my desktop set up in Web style - I prefer the old "classic" Windows appearance. To invoke the single click option, do the following:

Right click on any open area in your desktop.

Select Properties.

Select the Web tab.

Select the Folder Options button.

Answer "Yes" to the question about viewing Folder Options.

Select the General tab.

Select the "Custom. based on settings you chose" option.

Click the Settings box.

In the "Click items as follows" section of the Customs Settings box, select the "Single click to open an item" and "Underline icon titles only when I point at them" options.

Click the OK button and then the Close button on the next box to get back to your desktop.

Now, when you hold the cursor arrow over an icon on your desktop, the arrow changes to a hand with a pointing forefinger, just like in a web browser. All you have to do is click once, and the program you selected starts loading. Unfortunately, you still have to do a lot of double clicking once in your applications, but I find this set-up a lot easier to use.