Problem Number 1

This problem occurs to all teens out there who want to come home and relax. All of us teens want to play video games, whether we prefer XBOX or Playstation, we'll want to play video games. A large chunk of us want to come home and play our favourite games on our computers. Now, not all of our parents want to pay 3000$ for a nice computer, so how are we supposed to play those nice games? Especially when our video cards are constantly being outdated by new, "way too expensive" ones? That's the problem, we want to play nice games, but we don't want to pay three thousand just to play them. I recently installed Far Cry 2 on my PC and the graphics card was way too old! Go figure right? Then I put in Far Cry 2 and it was as slow as a darn snail. There was a low frames per second and the graphics totally sucked. Now, as soon as I saw this, I immediately assumed it was the graphics card, and I was 101% correct. I researched my card and it was almost 6 months too old. That's fairly old for a new computer. The card to the left is 455 bucks! So my points are:

a) Why should we have to pay so much money just for a decent computer?
b) Why do video cards have to be constantly updated (It sickens most people how much money it costs to get a new one)
c) Why do new computers have old graphics cards?

When you buy a computer brand-new it would have a brand-new graphics card just as you suspected. Nowadays, there are like 50 different models being sold at once, the newest ones sold at around 200-300$! That's a lot of money and I think it is totally pathetic.

Problem Number 2

If you can't afford a very nice computer, and your parents won't buy one for you, how will you get it? We all know that money does not grow on trees and paying 5000$-10,000$ for a computer is just bogus. Most of us would never spend that much on one anyways. But why do computer brands have to have so many different models? Some models are nice, of course, but why charge 5000$ for them? Does it really cost 100$ to make a gigabyte of ram? Probably not! I have the feeling that greed has gotten to most brand names and that's why it is so much money. For all of you reading this right now, look up on Google how to make a computer from scratch. It'll make you want to join electronics class and make your own ram! It really annoys at least 50% of people the fact that a computer with the latest graphics card, latest CPU, latest motherboard, lots of ram, ETC, is at minimum 2100$. Many people are constantly looking for cheap deals, and finding them extremely disappointing. Enough said, they cost too much money.

Problem Number 3

The gaming district. I have researched tons about this specific topic and it doesn't appeal to me very much. The game district has spent too much money on games, and will continue to do so. As the games get more and more advanced the computer brand names want to meet at least the standards of the games to get a peak effect of the graphical environments and whatnot. 100% of new games will always be better than what there is to sell, require so much ram that a new computer must be made. It's crazy, and exactly like Far Cry 2, unless you have 4000$ to spare there's no point in buying the new games. Go buy a darn Xbox 360, buy the same game, and you'll only spend 300-400 dollars! A new console won't be out for another while right? Plus you can always sell it for slightly less and people will buy the console from you. But the thing is, playing an Xbox may be different for some people than playing PC. There is a wide variety of PC games for cheap whereas Xbox games are very expensive. So many people want a PC, which will always have the best graphics of all Xboxs and Playstations, and have the biggest capability of them all, but they don't want to spend so much! Why can't people see this!? I hope this helped some of you out there, knowing that you're not the only one who dreams of owning an awesome computer! Sometimes I'm happy to own a PC instead of an Xbox, since the technology is way more advanced, it is still not cost worthy to make, so why charge much? I think this question will irk us no matter who we are! Your informative--RJ

Each key has a microchip and an OLED display; this means you can put any picture you want on any key, and make it do anything you want. For example, you find yourself doing your homework for German, you can quickly switch layouts using the keyboard's software in order to show letters with umlauts on top of them (ü, for example). If you hold shift, or activate Caps lock, the letters on the keyboard will change to uppercase to reflect that.

It doesn't end there, if you are playing a game, you can program the keys to show you more useful information - “Reload” instead of the “R” key or even a picture of some ammunition. If you are using a graphics program, such as Photoshop, the keys will automatically change to show you the icons for the tool you would use, so an Eraser icon in place of the “E” key. You can even create a mosaic of key images to show a picture or anything else you could care to imagine.

Apart from the standard keys, there are also 10 keys on the extreme left hand side of the keyboard dedicated to be shortcuts, you can make them open up your favourite applications, website links, documents, shut down your computer and if you want, to change keyboard layouts quickly.

The keyboard has two USB ports, an SD card slot to store all the different layouts in, and an optional cable lock to secure it to your desk. You'll probably want to secure it after you spend $1600 to get your hands on it.

Get it here.

Here I attempt to prove that wrong and save you money whilst getting you a better PC as well. If you have enough money to buy a new, high-end PC every year then you can skip this article though!

Scenario

Imagine that I have £1000 ($2000 at the time of writing) and I have a choice:

1. Spend half of it on a cheaper £500/$1000 PC (typical spec. 2.33GHz Core Duo, 2GB RAM, 250GB HDD, 8600GTS and 19" wide-screen LCD).
2. Spend it all and get a Quad Core with double the disk space and a better graphics card (8800 GT) and maybe a bit more RAM.

The thing is that the cheap one will do everything you want it to now (play any game out there - maybe not at the highest resolution but close). It's next year that the newest games will start to struggle and you'll wish you had bought the better system.

Of course the you will still have £500/$1000 in the bank (plus interest) so you can go out and buy another PC. The best bit is that this second PC will be better than the more expensive one you could have bought in the first year. And you still have the "old" one which is still very usable.

Conclusion

Don't be sucked in by the shops claiming that you need to get a better spec. system. Look at what you want to do and buy the lowest spec. system you can make do with. Then you'll end up with two PC's.

This has worked every year for the last decade and I see no reason for it to change. It even seems to work if you spend just £300/$600 on a PC each year as you end up with three PCs and the latest one will still be better than the single one you could have bought for a £1000. If you don't believe it get some prices and specs now and look again in a year. It works.

The best Email service that I know of is AOL. This is why… AOL provides a free Email service for any age group with Parental Controls, Internet Security, Safe Browsing, Search Engine, News, Music, Video, and lots more! If you go to AOL.com, you can create free email account. Then, you can download things like AOL toolbar for Internet Explorer and Firefox, AOL Parental Controls for your computer, myAOL for easy access to your favorite websites, FREE Version of a McAfee VirusScan Plus, AOL Computer Checkup, Active Security Monitor, and last but not least, AOL Instant Messenger. To get this go here. To get all of this in an all-in-one software, get AOL 9.1 within the link provided. By the way, if you have Windows Vista, almost everything is Vista Ready!

Web Browsing

I don't think that AOL 9.1 is the greatest web browser in the world, that's why I recommend Mozilla Firefox. Mozilla Firefox has many awards for being the safest, easiest, fastest, and overall best web browser around. It is being updated all the time, and only gets better. It's free and easy to use. And best of all, you can make it completely you with free add-ons that make Firefox your own. You can choose a theme to make Firefox the way you want it to look. Also, get free extensions such as eBay extension, which helps you with shopping for things online, or you could get extensions that add visual effects to Firefox. I have used Firefox for a year now and continue to support it completely. To get it go to their website here.

Office Software

The best part about this is that you don't have to download anything. There is a web-based office software that you can use instead of buying Microsoft Office. I am not saying Microsoft Office is bad in any way, but there is free office software out there that is almost as good and free. It is called ThinkFree. It looks almost exactly like Office 2003. It lets you have 1 gig of online storage too! To sign up, go here. There is also OpenOffice that is free, but you do have to download it. You can get that here.

Security:

I'm going to repeat one part here. You can get some basic Security for your computer for free. I mentioned in the Email section that with AOL you can get a free version of McAfee VirusScan Plus. There is also Windows Defender which is basic security for Windows. You can get that here.

Hope this helps you guys out. Enjoy!