Once you get past the basic decision about desktop vs. laptop, what other considerations should come into your computer purchase? Cost is an obvious factor, since few among us have unlimited budgets. You can spend a bit more and buy a faster computer or one with additional memory, and thereby extend that three-year replacement period another year or two. Or you can buy the slowest one available with the least amount of memory, and you're bound to be at least as happy as the person who bought a far more expensive top-of-the-line computer a year ago!

Once you take cost into account, you're left with only two significant choices: the brand, and the operating system. Buying a Dell rather than a Gateway is a choice of brand; buying an Apple rather than a Gateway is not only a choice of brand, but is also a choice of operating system.

At this point you're going to have to consider whether you will make your buying decision based upon a purely rational comparison of manufacturers and their products, or whether you're going to be influenced to one degree or another by less tangible aspects of computers, as status symbols. Frankly, when I made my latest computer purchase, I spent time looking at such things as the reliability of the manufacturer's products, and I read numerous product reviews in consumer magazines for many months before making my final decision. I also had the advantage of working in a university which had purchased computers from a few different companies in the past few years, and I was aware of how often (or how rarely) the equipment had problems.

Sooner or later you come to a buying decision that is going to put you into one "camp" or the other: the operating system. Marketers are aware that many people are downright passionate about operating systems, and they use campaigns such as "the computer for the rest of us" to exploit those emotions. Unless you consider yourself to be a computer "techie," your operating system choice for the typical home computer is between Microsoft's Windows 98 and Apple's Macintosh OS (version OS X will be released this summer). Setting aside the emotional appeals made by one side or the other, the decision falls heavily on your personal environment.

For instance, do you already use a computer at work? If so, you may find it easier to use the same operating system at home also. This means you don't have to switch back and forth between two operating systems everyday, and you can take what you already know about the office machine and immediately apply it to your new home computer.

Do you have a circle of close friends and family that already own computers? If so, you may want to use the same operating system that they do, so that you can provide mutual support when things go awry. This is especially true if that circle includes one or more technologically savvy people whom you can call on for help.

Finally, if you already own a computer, it is unlikely that you are going to want to switch from one operating system to another, since that may mean that much of your existing software may not easily function on the new system. I would only recommend switching in those cases, where you are benefiting from using the same operating system available to you at work or in use by your family and friends.

Drew Smith is an instructor with the School of Library and Information Science at the University of South Florida in Tampa. He is also a regular contributor to the quarterly journal Genealogical Computing, where he writes the "Genealogy Cybrarian" column (formerly known as "Infobahn"). He can be reached at drewsmith@aol.com.