THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, October 8, 1994 TAG: 9410080032
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JAMES SCHULTZ, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 92 lines
GIMME A 90 MHz CPU, throw in a half-gig hard drive, how's about a 17-inch high-res tube, and, oh yeah, I gotta have expandability. I don't wanna hafta come back here before January.
Got it?
You probably don't get it if you're new to computers and the specs-laced jargon hackers and p.c. gurus love to throw around. Go shopping for a personal computer these days, and you might end up wishing you'd gone back to school for that master's degree.
``It's like learning a new language - like modem and all these difficult words,'' said Anne Brinkmann, 28, as she shopped for a laptop computer at CompUSA in Norfolk. ``I feel a little overwhelmed and confused. I don't know what will fulfill my needs. Right now I'm just looking and getting ideas.''
Now crowding store shelves, thanks to unrelenting technical advance, is a new crop of lightning-fast personal computers with huge storage capacities. Seemingly endless rounds of price-cutting by manufacturers have reduced prices to fit many household budgets.
And new versions sprout every season. In the fall, it's the super-duper-charged version, four times as fast as the summer model. By winter, the bells and whistles are louder and cheaper. By spring the only things your p.c. can't do is sort your socks or clean your toilet.
But the majority of today's shoppers seem just as computer-challenged as they were at the dawn of the p.c. age, way back in the early 1980s.
``People today come in with the weirdest misconceptions,'' said CompUSA salesperson Eric Castro. ``They see the `hit any key' command. Then they can't find the `any' key on the keyboard. Or when they get it home (they think) they'll make it blow up. They won't make it blow up.''
According to figures compiled by the U.S. Department of Commerce, a personal computer can be found in, at most, 30 percent of American households. No one is exactly sure how many are being used at any given moment by individuals or businesses. Estimates of ``installed'' personal computers range from between 58 million to 80 million.
Still, says Commerce Department computer industry analyst Clay Woods, p.c. sales are on the upswing. A healthy 16 percent growth rate for the industry is projected by year's end.
Brinkmann, a German who now works at Old Dominion University as a lab assistant and physical therapy instructor, wasn't about to make an on-the-spot buy. She was mulling over the options: megahertz, megabytes, RAM, screen resolution.
She might have been a little dazed by all the jargon, but Brinkmann said she's made up her mind to take the p.c. plunge.
``I grew up without a television set. I used to resent technology,'' she confided. ``But I found out from a friend it (a computer) can be very helpful. When I find a computer that fulfills what I need and feels good, then I'll buy.''
Computer-buying time had also come for a 61-year-old insurance agent from York County. She said she was leaning toward a big brand name, but hefty markups left her fuming and not inclined to go retail. So maybe she'd shop mail-order, save some major bucks.
The agent, who didn't give her name, plopped a big computer shopping guide in her CompUSA shopping cart. She was going to take it home, look it over, try to decide if she could afford a 100-megahertz machine with 8 megs of RAM and maybe 350 megabytes worth of hard drive - all upgradable, of course. ``Speed is important,'' she said.
``When I was first introduced to computers in 1986, I was intimidated. I'm still a little bit intimidated,'' she said. ``You've got to be computer literate or you'll go out of business. It (literacy) is not an option.''
She thinks she can predict the computer's future.
``Multimedia is where it's going,'' asserted the agent. ``You're going to have to show the pictures and play the sound.''
Sue and Tom Hirsch couldn't agree more. The two Navy commanders, parents of 12-year-old twin girls and a 9-year-old son, were out prowling for a replacement for their aging home computer. They wanted a machine that could handle it all, from state-of-the-art games to serious business for the grownups.
They weren't dazed and confused, but determined.
``Here we stand, looking at a new system,'' Sue said. ``This was something foreign to me (growing up). I want my daughters being comfortable with computers.''
The Hirsches advise wary shoppers to put aside any lingering computer phobia and try to get a handle on new technology. The future is here, and it's on the fast track.
``Society is going electronic. It's computerized,'' Tom Hirsch said. ``It's the wave of the future. If you're not computer-literate you're going to be doing blue-collar work.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by Paul Aiken, Staff
Adel Karam, manager of CompUSAm displays a laptop computer at his
Norfolk store.
by CNB