New PCs, new choices for business owners

Nation's Business, July, 1998 by Albert G. Holzinger, Tim McCollum

Buying appropriate desktop m has always been a challenge for most small-business owners. There have been many competing brands and features but few comprehensible explanations of the pros and cons of each.

One aspect, however, had been straightforward: choosing the processor. Entrepreneurs had tended to maximize the useful life of new PCs by equipping them with the fastest processor manufactured at the time by industry leader Intel Corp. of Santa Clara, Calif.

Now, even that's not a given.

The K6 processors engineered by Advanced Micro Devices of Sunnyvale, Calif., have emerged as reliable alternatives to Intel's current low-end models, Pentium MMX processors running at speeds up to 300 megahertz (MHz).

Moreover, both the 300 MHz MMX Intel and AMD models--typically found in fully equipped PCs that cost about $1,500--capably run the word-processing, spreadsheet, accounting, and other software used now and for the foreseeable future in mainstream businesses.

Of course, these systems are relatively slow, although they're inexpensive compared with the newest $3,000 systems containing Intel's 400MHz Pentium II processor and a set of complementary chips mounted on a main board featuring the breakthrough 100MHz system bus.

A PCs bus is the "highway" on which information travels between the processor and random access memory (RAM), where programs reside when they're in use. For several years, the bus speed has been 66MHz. The faster the bus, the faster the processor's raw power can be converted into productive work.

To help gauge how much additional performance a user can expect for roughly double the purchase price, Nation's Business tested one of the new high-end systems, the GP6-400 PC, from Gateway 2000 Inc. of North Sioux City, S.D., (1-800-846-4208, www.gateway.com).

This network-ready PC ($3,143, plus $95 for shipping, direct from Gateway 2000) instantly opens workhorse programs, including Microsoft's Word 97 word processor and Excel 97 spreadsheet. It also performs graphics tasks at breathtaking speeds.

The technical details: a 400Mhz Pentium II processor on a 100MHz main board featuring Intel's 440BX chip set; 128 megabytes (MB) of state-of-the-art RAM; a lightning-fast graphics accelerator with 8MB of memory; fast 10-gigabyte fixed-disk, standard floppy-disk, and 32-speed CD-ROM drives; a wavetable sound system featuring three speakers, including a booming subwoofer that provides deep, rich bass tones; a modem that operates at speeds of up to 56 kilobytes per second; a fast-Ethernet network card; and a monitor with a whopping 18-inch viewable area.

This GP6-400 model also includes Microsoft's Windows 95 operating system--and a coupon redeemable for a free upgrade to Windows 98--and the new Small Business Edition of the Office suite of productivity applications (See "Time To Update Your Office?" on Page 38.)

So, which category of system--budget or state-of-the-art--is right for your small business? It depends.

For everyday work by clerical employees and managers alike, a low-end system probably will be much more than adequate. But for those who routinely perform graphics-intensive work--including Internet-related tasks--and for others for whom time is more important than money, the GP6-400 or another PC in this elite class is a machine to die for.