Choosing the Hardware

Abstract

From the viewpoint of one seeking to buy anything it is, of course, good common sense to be sure first that you know precisely what you want that something for. In the case of computers, you want the hardware to run the software, so it is wise to first decide what software you want, and then seek the hardware that is suitable to run that software. And that advice has been offered in these pages, as recently, in fact, as the previous chapter, where it was suggested as a must in opting for a system of any kind. In that sense, then (that of how one decides what hardware to buy) hardware (selection) follows software (selection).

Despite the conventional wisdom about choosing software before hardware, this is not an immutable truth, and hardware considerations are important, too. In fact, with current trends, perhaps hardware considerations are more important than they ever were.