While you're pondering ports, consider three ways in which computers can make connections without wires: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and infrared. Wi-Fi lets you connect to your network or the Internet over medium distances. Bluetooth is designed for shorter ranges and devices like specially configured printers or earphones. Infrared works over the shortest distances and requires a clear line of sight between devices; it's an older technology used for occasional connections (for instance, your mobile phone and the PC on which you back up its data).
Angela, in fact, uses the infrared port on her PC for that very purpose, so she remains a fan. Bluetooth, on the other hand, strikes her as not yet worth the trouble, but if it's in a machine you like, what the heck. (We'll see if she changes her tune when she finally upgrades to a newer mobile phone--something to keep in mind in your own situation.) And Wi-Fi is, she asserts, basically a necessity for laptops (and a pretty good option for any desktop).
Remember the floppy drive? Forget the floppy drive. It's rare even to find a floppy drive on a late-model computer (which ought to make you a bit nervous about older files you painstakingly backed up to floppies--best to get that info into another format before you chuck your old machine). You will therefore need an optical drive--meaning CD or DVD--on your next machine. The cheapest machines generally come with a CD writer, which of course can also read CDs.
But if you think you might do anything at all with video, says Steve, you'll want a DVD drive, which can handle both video and data storage. The DVD landscape is tricky, though; you'll still find a few DVD drives that can't write disks at all. Next up the line are drives that play both CDs and DVDs but can only write CDs. And then there are drives that can write CDs and DVDs. The most expensive models can even write dual-layer DVDs, which hold about twice as much data--but sell for a lot more than twice as much cash.
Confused yet? It gets worse, yowl the Duo. DVDs also come in "flavors" of plus or minus (mmm, tasty math symbols ... okay, maybe not). And for any given DVD, one or the other flavor could be incompatible with older equipment you've got. It's a big mess, and it happened because two separate tech factions got greedy.
If you want to get around this boondoggle, look for a drive that can record both DVD+RW and DVD-RW discs. Also, a lot of desktop machines now come with two drives--one DVD reader and one DVD writer. If you do a lot of disk copying, this is a great feature that'll keep you from sitting in front of the machine swapping disks (and, depending on the software you use for copying, possibly gunking up your RAM). Again, thanks to USB 2.0 and FireWire, you can always add drives outside the computer. But you'll pay a premium compared to drives that think inside the box.
One thing you can't add outside the box is the video subsystem, the chips that get the picture to your screen. Cheaper computers use what's known as a shared memory model, stealing some of your RAM to handle video needs. More expensive machines have special cards with a dedicated graphics processor and high-speed memory just for video. Most folks will find cheap video fast enough for their purposes, but if you're a gamer or you're watching a lot of video on your system, you're not going to be happy with shared-memory video. (And Steve notes something that gamers know all too well: The hottest video chips just don't turn up in notebook computers.) If you have a flat-panel monitor with a digital connector, you'll want a video card with what's known as a DVI port. It can give you a somewhat better picture than the traditional analog jack.
Audio's another issue where at least some of the options you'll want will require either foresight or a screwdriver (for opening the box for upgrades). Once again, the best systems tend to be in--or rather, outside of--desktops. Doesn't matter what name brand the little speakers that come in notebooks have on them: They're invariably crappy. (Don't believe us? Get a really good set of headphones and plug it into your headphone jack. Worlds of difference.) Getting the very best sound on your machine is like getting the best video: You'll probably want a special card for that, one that can handle surround sound in games and movies. As for speakers, a 2:1 system (two regular speakers, one subwoofer) is basic, a 5:1 system is much better, and from there the sky's the limit.
