Selecting a suitable computer system

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BTEC IT Unit 2 Assignment 3                                                         Aman Harees 12 B

Selecting a suitable computer system

Task: Find three computer systems which are currently for sale and evaluate their specifications and select the one which you think is most suitable for Ben and Jerry. Write a detailed report to the family identifying the computers you have selected and explaining which computer that you consider to be the most suitable, justifying your choice. (Distinction Criteria)

Dear Andrew,

I received your letter regarding a new computer for your children and I looked up several computers matching the criteria you provided. I trimmed the list to just three computers and I gave you my honest thoughts about them including a critical, technical analysis of each computer. I hope you find my advice helpful.

The first computer I wanted you to look at was the Apple Mac Pro which at £5691 is a high end, top of the line PC that is very expensive but very powerful nonetheless.

The Mac Pro has a powerful quad core processor with two dual core processors capable of 16 GB of SDRAM. To have 16 GBs is unheard of in the computing world so Ben should find that whatever demanding application he uses, the computer still handles smoothly. At 2 TB it has a huge hard disk space that dwarfs other mainstream hard drive sizes. Having this amount of space would allow Ben to store as many games as he wants without worrying about the size of it. The graphics card is the impressive 512MB nVidia Quadro FX 4500 that has a 128 bit memory interface when most these days only have 64 bit. This graphics card however seems more appropriate for casual gamer, and those who are not in the market for the latest graphics card. I’m unsure that Ben is just a casual gamer or if he’s a games enthusiast who is very interested in his gaming. Nonetheless, this graphics card is not only supportive of the latest graphics but it also possesses enough processing power to generate smooth gaming without any noticeable lagging.

The Mac Pro comes with one of the best professional video editing software programmes that’s used by many Hollywood movie editors. Final Cut Pro is one of the leading video editing applications with thousands of effects and although, it looks complicated to begin with, eventually it does become much easier to use. Its image editing package is impressive as well with Adobe Fireworks, Illustrator and Photoshop available for Jerry to play around with. Illustrator is a vector based image editor and Photoshop is simply the best application for the editing of digital images.

One mustn’t discount the Photobooth feature which uses its webcam to take pictures and videos. It has a range of standard effects such as sepia tone, black and white, thermal camera, X ray, comic, mirror etc. There are range of backdrops like clouds, colour dots and rollercoaster available. This would please Jerry since he preferred a PC with a webcam to record.  The price includes an Apple DVI to Video adaptor to connect the PC to your Television in order to view the movies you downloaded.

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An excellent aspect of this PC is the operating system it uses. The Mac OS snow leopard is a far more efficient OS when compared to Windows due to the fact that it’s not susceptible to viruses and its stunning user interface. Every button has a glassy feel and all applications are organised very well. The finder application searches through the hard drive at incredible speeds to look for a document or another application. It has a futuristic feel that Windows Vista and 7 have recently tried to emulate, however, the original is always the best. It was largely ...

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