Category Archives: Computers

Trade shows, a great source of leads, without even paying.

Bootstrap, Business, Computers, concepts, Entrepreneurship, Marketing, , ,

Trade shows, Fairs, Home Shows and such are common all over the nation.  For a small amount of money you can have your small business seen by the masses that come by your little booth.  They can talk to you, and hopefully buy your stuff.

But what if the product you sell is something that mostly businesses buy?  This makes a problem for you, if you get a booth at the show almost everyone who comes by will not own a business that you can sell to, you will spend a lot of time and money with little return.

I looked at this as a bootstrapping entrepreneur and thought this way.  There are 100’s of businesses at this show, most of them have the owner or decistion maker stuck in their booth and on a slow day they have very little to do.  So I figure out which day will likely be the slowest then I go there, I take my business cards and some flyers and start talking to business owners.

Today I went to a home show, I saw a few existing customer but I spent most of my time looking for companies that I could talk to about my products and services.  Of course I sell computers and web design.  Over 20% of the companies I talked to had an imediate need for one of my products or services.  I got their cards, wrote notes on the back and left the event a few hours later with 15 companies that I can call and do business with.  Where else can you make so many quality leads in such a short time, for free while having fun?

I have been doing this with great success for a few years.  A few times I have even had people write me checks on the spot.

So if you are lacking for leads for your business consider this as a great bootstap way to make some instant customers.

Bootstrap your business.

Computers, concepts, Entrepreneurship, Inspiration, Marketing

Every day people start businesses.  Today I am going to talk about the real businesses, not the home based small business that you do part time, but a business where you hire people, you work at it, you create systems and build something that has long term value. This will be the first in a series of blogs about this subject.  HOW TO BUILD A BUSINESS ON A SHOESTRING.  AKA Bootstrapping.

When I see people doing this I see two VERY different type of people.  I see the first type, the people who have worked in the corporate world for a long time who decided they can do it better.  Then I see the people who just have an idea that they think will make a lot of money, and they have the drive and will to make it happen even if they don’t have much money.  The biggest difference between these two is the amount of money they will spend and blow through.

The Corporate Guy

Lets assume that both guys want to start a web design company. (The following is a true story, I know the guy well, the numbers are correct.)   The corporate guy sits down and start to think about what he will need to run his business, he thinks about all the tools he had at his last company and starts to write a list.  He needs a conference room, he need a high end server with redundancy and $10,000 of software to make it all work.  He need high end printers to show samples to customers he need an impressive office so that he can hire the best talent.  He spends $80,000 on furniture and making his office suite look great, he then hires 3 techs to sit down and create logo generation software, scripts to automate the entire interview process with the customer.  All things he was used to.  His techs also generate templates, then he goes out and advertises his services in many different mediums, he started with $150,000 and that is long gone, he has borrowed $100,000 more and has monthly expenses of over $25,000.   He gets some calls and some business but even with $10,000 coming in each month he quickly runs out of money, gets rid of his staff to reduce expenses but it is too late, he can’t pay the bills and after only 10 months he is our of business, he lost his $150,000 the $100,000 of his investor and he has bills to his landlord and other people who gave him things on credit for another $80,000.  And about 300 customer who paid for sites were left with nothing.  (I know all of this is true, he STILL owes me over $15,000)

The bootstrapper.

Next is the story of another guy that I know, he is a bootstraper, a real entrepreneur.  He also decided to build a web design question, he asked himself, “What is the minimum that I need to really function?”  The answer is a nice desk, nice chair with a nice computer loaded with the proper software.  He does not need to host the server locally, he can host it at one of the many hosting companies for about $200 per year or less.  Every time he sells 25 web sites he needs to pay $200 again but that is ok, he will be making money then.   He does not need an office, he can meet the customers at their office, or just over the phone.  He needs very little to get started.  He does not make an automated system for customer interaction, he just talks to them and finds out what they need.  He finds free advertising, and starts getting word of mouth.  His costs are lower so he charges less than the other guys but not too little to kill his business.  He saves most of his money so that his business can grow.

After a few months he has enough money for a small office, he finds a few people who are young and eager to learn, maybe not top talent, but people he can train from scratch and pay less than going rates  People who have a good attitude and are sharp.  He hires some sales people paying them 100% on commission so that he only pays out when he makes money.   9 months into his business he has a few hundred customers a small staff and a nice office.  He brings in 50 new customers a month at an average of $600, making 30k per month, with expenses under 10k per month he is quickly building his networth, and building his company.  He also has a business that can run without him, he can start to take time off, and if he got a bit bigger and put all the systems in writing and have everyone follow it he could even sell the business for huge money.

Findings

I would always invest in a bootstrapper well before I invested in a corporate guy, the problem is that the bootstrappers almost always don’t ask for money but when they do you should listen.  One company that was a bootstrap company, that did everything in house and did it on the cheap was Google.  1000’s of other companies started up in Silicon Valley with tons of different ideas but most were run by people who could simply not be frugal, they needed the fancy cars, and parties and cool offices.  Most of these companies failed.

When you are looking for a company to invest in look to see if they are a bootstrapper.  Don’t be impressed with the fancy office or cars, be scared.  If you are running your own business or looking to start one think about what is really need to make your business money, don’t spend money that you have not made yet unless it is 100% needed.

Over the next few weeks I will write blogs about bootstrapping, simply click on the bootstrap Category to see the other entries.

Web design is still a growing part of computer industry.

Business, Computers, concepts, Entrepreneurship, , , ,

Believe it or not, most business STILL do not have a real web page.  The market really fell out for the computer hardware business but we still are seeing a large demand for web design. The good thing about web design is that it has become easier and much cheaper to do but the perceived value has not gone down.  There are many companies out there selling sites for $5,000 or so that outsource it and pay less than $200 to get the site made, pocketing the rest.  I figure I can find a way to make a better site and charge much less.

When it has come to web design our company has usually passed it off.  It was not our core business, it was something that no one at our company knew how to do.  A few times we hired people to help us do web design for clients but every time it has failed, the designer was not as good as they thought they were and the client demand more than they originally wanted.

So now that our core business is down I decided that I would personally learn more about it.  Yea I know HTML, I know tables and forms, and I have built many pages over the years but to do the really good ones you need much more.  You need to know CSS to make it look good and have the same format.  You need to know PHP so that it is easy to change, dynamic and more functional.  So I set out last week to learn these two things.  CSS was easy, it is a simple concept that took only a few hours to learn.  PHP was much more complex because it is much more powerful, but after a few long days I feel I am good at PHP also.

The next step was to test out my ideas by making a simple website for one of my customers, I just happened to have one who needed a web page, so I built one for them.  You can check it out here. During the process of building this site I also have found a ton of really good resources

If you have been a reader for a long time you will know that I am all about delegating things.  My general rule is that if you can find someone who can do what you are doing for less, and is at least 80% as good you should have them do it.  The problem is that for me I have not found this, everyone wants to charge way too much and I have not found anyone who can even do the whole job at 80% the level that I now can.  I have found people who can do parts better or worse.  This is why I am not delegating.  If I start getting larger I may start to delegate more.  But in reality if you are building up a libary of tools it makes it much faster and easier.

The secret to getting the BEST deal on your next computer.

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This is part of my Computer series of blog entries, click here for the others.

Ok almost everyone, and every business needs a computer to do their day to day business. For most people a computer is a large purchase.  For some businesses that buy hundreds of computers it can be a major part of their budget.  So getting a good price on this major purchase is very important.

What I am about to tell you is a secret that the people in the computer industry do not want you to know, in fact when I was running my retail store I have fired people for telling customer this.  The secret is this, computers are very easy to build, and you can buy the parts directly and shave off 30-50% of your purchase price.  It has always been cheaper to build your own but recently it has become very easy.  The parts are designed to work together, and you can mix/match them almost any way you like.

If you think that this is an off the wall idea then you would be very wrong.  The large computer companies are called Tier 1 Companies in the industry.  The rest of the companies that sell over 100,000 computers a year are called Tier 2 Companies.  The rest are simply called White Box, the industry word for Generic.  For the last 5 years the white box makers have been gaining market share, according to intel they sold over 57% of their CPUs in the white box channel.  During this same time the number of computer stores has fallen dramaticlly.  So how can this be, the answer is because millions of people and business are building their own computers.  The number one largest user of computers in the world, Google, has never purchased a server or workstation, they have built them all.  Microsoft is the same way, so is many of the fortune 500 companies, and millions of smaller businesses.  Many shop online, or they go to stores that sell parts.  Fry’s Electronics has built an empire on this with mega computer stores selling parts, but Frys is over priced, has very little help and it is hard to return things to them so I would never suggest you buy from them.  The best bet is your local computer company, if you are in Arizona call on us to provide your hardware, if you are outside of AZ you can still call us for advise, we can even tell you where to get the best deals online.  It is now said that as many as 1/3rd of all new computers are built by the end user, so why are you not doing it.  Let me tell you how.

So here is how you do it. First you need to buy the parts.  Only buy new products from a good company and you will be good.  Pick out the CPU you like, I usually suggest AMD because they are good, but in reality it matters little, as for most people any $80 cpu will do.  Now you get a motherboard that supports the CPU, just look for any new one that has the same socket.  I like MSI the best for motherboards, they are high quality and well priced. Basically every new computer uses DDR2 memory, so buy that, I would get at least 2GB if you plan to use vista.  Next you need a hard drive, again for most people just get the size you need then find the best price.  For most businesses the 160GB is the best to shoot for.  I like WD for the brand but others will also do, just make sure it is SATA.  Now you need a optical drive, I suggest a DVD burner, they do everything and only cost a bit more.  I usually suggest people get a card reader for all that digital memory.  Last you need a case to put the whole thing into.  The case will come with the powersupply and most will be good for basic systems, for really advanced systems with lots of extras a good powersupply is a good investment. That is it, you have everything you need to get started.  Guess what, you can do all this for well under $250.

Now lets talk about ad ons.  For most business systems you really don’t need a video card, just get a motherboard that has one on board.  You only need a video card if you want to run two monitors or if you play 3D video games.  If you play games then there is much more to consider, I will talk about that at a later time, but mostly this is a business blog.  You may also want a new keyboard, mouse, speakers or monitor with your new computer.

When you get all the parts simply open the case and start putting everything in.  I suggest putting the drives in first, then the motherboard, then the CPU, RAM and connect all the wires.  Don’t force things but use firm pressure where needed.  The hardest part is connecting the case wires to the motherboard, but there is a chart in the motherboard book if you get lost.  Next you boot on your OS disk, install the OS, then install the drivers.

Doing all of this may take 3-4 hours the first time but you should save at least 300-500 by doing this, and for most people they don’t get paid $300 for 4 hours of work.  For a business that is buying 20 computers they probably just saved over $8,000 and even if they don’t want to build the computers they can hire someone to be an IT person for a month for way less than that much.

By building the computer you also will get some added benifits, first the parts are much higher quality then most name brand computers.  Next if anything goes wrong with the computers you have common parts that are easy to replace, unlike the pripority computer parts most large companies sell.  Lastly you get a clean OS installed, without all of that added on spam and advertising that the large companies put on all their computers.

So next time you need a computer buy the parts and build it, you get a much better deal that way, even if you need to hire an expert to help you.

Laptop Screen Size price point

Computers, , , , , , ,

A while ago I wrote an article about How to Select a laptop.  Read that if you have not already.  By far it is the most popular blog I ever wrote.

I have noticed a major change in the last month in the laptop market, and that change is about monitor size.  For at least 2 years the 15.4″ wide screen size was the cheapest and the most common.  Before that it was the 15″ screen.  Before 2003 or so the 14″ screen was the best value.   Usually an upgrade to a 17″ screen cost hundreds more, most of this was due to the lack of economy of scale.  In desktop screens a 15″ screen has cost more than a 17″ for at least 2 years.  But now this is quickly becomming the case with laptops also.  It makes sence, when you have a larger screen the computer part of your laptop is also larger, and with less minituration the cost is lower.  I have already seen laptops with 17″ screens only $50 more than the same specs with a 15.4″ screen.   Though this 17″ laptop was a full 3 lbs heavier.  17″ laptops are more popular as more and more people no longer have desktop computers.  I would predict that by christmas there will be no price differenct between these two laptop monitor sizes for computers with the same specs.

Comment on this, and when christmas comes I will look for two laptops with the same specs that are the same price.

Awesome Free Swag on the Internet

blogs, Business, Internet, Marketing, , , , , , , , ,

Swag is the cool stuff you get for free when you go to conventions.  (Stuff We All Get) You also see it for many different businesses.  This article says that Swag is there to promote their products, and reward loyal customer, not to make a profit.  This is something that most businesses simply DON’T UNDERSTAND.   In the world of the internet it is rare, most companies simply can not afford to send out free stuff to the world with no return.

And some that do only send free e-swag, the digital stuff cause it costs them almost nothing.  By far the BEST e-swag I ever seen is called America’s Army.  It is a top quality video game, but instead of being sold it is given away for free to promote the US Army.  For the rest of this entry I will only focus on REAL stuff that gets sent to you.

5LBS of FREE CANDY by Southwest Candy – This one is great, I asked for it on monday, got the candy on tuesday via FedEx.  It is really good stuff, I really love the Jelly Belly ones.  They sell candy wholesale, really cheaply.  I will order from them if I ever have a bulk candy need, maybe Oct 31.  Here is a video of a girl getting her free candy.

FREE GREETING CARDS by Send Out Card – This is a great program where you can go online and customize quality greeting cards and then they are sent by postal mail directly to anyone you like.  You get the first three for FREE and after that the prices are cheap.

FREE MAPS – Here is a list of a ton of places where you can get free maps.  Really cool if you plan to travel.  If you would rather have an entire Atlas then click here.

FREE GUY STUFF – Here is a list of 9 things you can send away for.  I sent away for a few of them, the old spice body wash was the only one I received, it was enough for about 2 uses, so I am saving it for my next trip.

FREE LOCAL STUFF – You may or may not know, but Craigslist has a huge section of free stuff.  I have used it a few times when I rather just not pay.  Just look under the for sale section for the word free.  Search in your local area to get your local stuff.

TOTALLY FREE STUFF – This is a huge website with tons of links to free stuff.  Most of these will call you and such, but that is ok.  Go there now to get the full list.

Computer Entry: Trends in Computer Pricing

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I have been in the computer industry now for over 15 years.  During that time some trends have been the constant, that prices drop, and new technology is always making things.  So as of today this is what I am seeing in the world of computer pricing.  Here are my basic findings.

Laptop computers are very affordable. Laptops have been falling much faster than desktops, I think this is because they are all made by 7 main highly competitive companies, and they are trying to push eachother for market share.  The world of desktops is still controlled by many different companies and most all computers are built by companies in the same nation they are bought.  This raises costs, and reduces competition.

Margins are increasing. I have noticed that most stores that sell computer hardware have really increased their margins.  I was at Staples today and most of the hardware they were selling was at least 2.5 times their cost.  That is much larger than in the past.  I have seen this trend in retail stores.  Basically they know that if you want/need it now you are willing to pay.  In computer systems the big companies have really increased margin on desktop computers.  This makes a small company like me much easier to compete.  I think that most of this is due to the large reduction of competition in the retail market, most local computer stores are out of business and even big companies like COMP USA are basically gone.

Monitors have leveled off. LCD monitors have been coming down in price for a long time but they seem to reach a point where they don’t go down any more.  19″ and lower size monitors are only 10% less than they were a year ago.  22″ monitors are down a bit more but they still are near the price they were a while ago.

Hard Drive Prices are plummeting. Storage is king, this is mostly due to the higher data density.  They can put more data on the same hardware as before simply using new technology.  In just the last 2 months 500GB hard drives are down over 20% and most drives are down over 15%.  They are much cheaper than they were last year. Even with the decline in prices

RAM has leveled off. RAM is always going up and down, DDR2 RAM, the main RAM used to make computers is going down a bit but is fairly stable.  DDR has really dropped in price, at the start of the year it was double the price of DDR2, but not it is just a bit more.  I think this is mostly due to lowered demand of DDR.  If you are using a computer with less than 1GB of RAM right now then do yourself a favor and upgrade!!!

CPUs Fell off a cliff. The largest change in systems prices has come from the CPU.  They have fallen like crazy.  1 year ago a 6400 Athlon 64 was over $400 now you can get a Faster Quad Core version for UNDER $160.  Most CPU have lost over half their value, and the stock prices of AMD and INTEL have followed.

Motherboard have increased in price. The motherboard is the HUB that everything connects to.  Due to the higher demand and more precice demand of the rest of the better hardware it is now required to use a much better motherboard, so the average price of a motherboard has gone UP about 10% in the last year, but for that extra 10% you get much more for your money.  The old ones simply don’t exist any more.

Cases and Power Supplies have gone up. Power Supply Units have gone up slightly due to increased power stability required by todays newer motherboards, CPUs and RAM.  But cases have gone up by over 15%.  They are the largest and most bulky part of the computer, the production cost is tied to that of commoditys and they have gone up, and their shipping is tied to the price of OIL and we all know about that.

Optical Drives continue to decline. This year we have seen a 20% decline in the price of Optical Drives.  They simply can make more for less.

Flash Memory has plummeted. The price of flash memory has also fell like a rock.  Flash Memory is an open standard so cheap Asian production has killed the prices, this is great for us the customer, we now can have lots of memory to carry with us, or use in our toys.  The only thing that dropped faster than the memory prices is the stock of SanDisk, the largest producer.

Over all desktop systems have dropped about 10% in the last 3 months, and about 30% in the last year.  Now is a GREAT time to buy.  If you have a computer that is more than 3 years old then you should really think about upgrading to a new system.  It is a whole new world out there now.  Also many people may have bought a computer 2 years ago or so, but you purchased a computer that was built with 2 year old technology then you need to upgrade.  You will be glad that you did.  Click on the Image to the right to see our prices.

July, A record month for this blog and why

blogs, Business, Computers, concepts, Entrepreneurship, Inspiration, Marketing, Money, , , , , , , , , , ,

This month has really been a great month for this blog, it looks like Jason Dragon is getting some critical mass. July of 08 had over 2.3 times the unique visitors as the second best month, May of 08. Blogs are suppose to go up but this is a lot faster than normal. July 30 was the best day ever passing July 24 by 6 hits.

The stats say that this is due to a few things. First I started a Computer Entry section which is simply a page that has a list of all the blogs that I wrote on the subject of computer, but this page is very popular, it is on the top 5 of my pages every month. In that section I wrote an article about Laptop computers, and from the day I wrote it it has always been in the top 2 of all the pages. It now is by far the most popular article that I have ever written. But there is an article I just wrote yesterday, about StoresOnline, that had the LARGEST first day viewing of anything I ever wrote, it had more views than my entire blog was getting last month. The subject is something that many people are asking about online.

I also did a few things differently, I blogged a bit more with 14 entries, my previous record was 12. I also added my blog to StumbleUpon, I did not put the links from my blog so I really only got a few hits from that. But the MAIN area where I got more hits was by finding great blogs that had content that was much like mine and if I found a place where I could push the conversation forward, almost half of my new visitors came from that. I also was added to the Planet section of PF Buzz along with many of the top Finance blogs. I also was able to get more hits by adding more tags to my articles, I have about 20% of the hits coming from this. I also added myself to twitter finally, I have been trying it out before I publicize it but you can check it out if you like. I also rewrote my personal webpage at JasonDragon.com.

My best blogging moment of the month was due to a fairly unpopular buy very important blog I wrote, about why our country is in trouble economically. I linked to the Perot Charts site and the right hand guy, Mike Poss, of Ross Perot noticed the link and came to my blog, read it and took the time to email me about it. I always liked Ross Perot so it made me feel good to get this note.

In other blogging news I am still in the race for the 7m7y contest. This is a contest that could be described as mentorship by a really great and successful guy. He is going to mentor only 7 people and he is willing to do it for 7 years. He will help them all become multimillionaires. He will document the process and write a book on it. In two weeks or so the final 7 will be selected, I really hope I am one.

Thank you to all my readers, and all the people that subscribe to this blog, if it was not for you I would not be doing this, and this process has really taught me a lot.

Thanks, Jason Dragon

The StoresOnline meeting, what I thought

blogs, Business, Computers, concepts, Entrepreneurship, Internet, , , , , , ,

I always am trying to learn about business. Today I attended an event that I received an invitation for. It is for a company called StoresOnline or StoresOnline.com. It is a company that sends our huge amounts of direct mail with invitations to an event about how to make money on the internet. They promise free dinner and a free (128MB) MP3 player to everyone who shows up and stays for the whole event.

Well let me tell you what it is all about, and what you should expect if you ever go to one. First off they seemed professional and they really has their act together. While we waited for it to start they were showing a slideshow with facts about the internet and how big of an opportunity it is. It started on time then they spent about 30 minutes telling people about the internet, and how powerful it was. They then offered a website you could build yourself, selecting from about 40 templates, inserting your text and photos, and setting up your shopping cart with the items you want to sell. It was almost like the one that I currently use, PrecisionWeb, but they made everything through the website, no FTP, no domain name, no email or any of that (At least they did not mention this). For this service they charge a set-up fee of $199 (That if you bought before you left the room and thought about it would be reduced to $50.). Then they charged a hosting fee of $24.95 per month. I pay only $19.95 a month for my service and I get MUCH MORE than they offer.

Now here is where it starts to get really bad. They took some polls. First off most of the people there were over the age of 65. Next of the 200+ people there only 7 of the people in the room currently had a website of any kind. (That includes MySpace or blogs or anything) Next at least 2/3rds of the people I talked to there did not even own a computer. Now at the end of the meeting they handed everyone a order form/contract. If you sign it says they will bill your credit card the monthly fee until you cancel in writing. For me it was crazy. But I was surprised when I looked around almost half of the people there were signing up, handing over their credit card info and their money. One guy who signed up for his own web site did NOT even have a computer, and only used one a few times in his life.

The people who run StoresOnline know that almost all of these people will NEVER make even one sale. Whenever they talked about their success rate they always said “Very active clients” or something to that extent. Should you really be selling this service to people who you know with 98% certanty that they will never do anything with it, is that really ethical?

Now I would say that everything they said was very honest (They were careful about this), and they did disclose a lot of things about but they did not mention and success rates or anything that would make people think twice about this. Many times the pointed out how much that they were disclosing, even though the most important things were not. It was very polished.

Now they started talking about the fact that if you have a web site but nothing links to it, and no one knows about it, it will never be successful, which is very true. They now said that they have the fix for this, and they will show you how you will found with ease and how you can make a ton of money using their secret tricks to get listed first in every search engine. They then showed some examples of their clients, like the one who is FIRST on google with the keywords “inland empire thomas guide”. OK anyone that knows about SEO is laughing right now, I know. It was hard for me not to. If you search for “thomas guide” they are middle on the second page, not too bad. They listed 10 different methods that they will teach you to drive traffic to your site, such exciting things as, “Permission Email”, “Newsletters”, and “Affiliate Programs”, and they promised to teach you all the secrets of these. What was missing from the list is anything that is Web 2.0, such as blogging or and community like linked in or myspace. Everything they were showing was right from 2001.

Next they pushed an event in two weeks where they would be talking more in depth about internet marketing. You would need to buy the plan today in order to go to this event. And then they dropped the bomb, at this event in two weeks they will offer a package that will give you access to these secrets and the other things that you need to get people to go to your site it will ONLY cost $3,600, but they will make a special offer at the event, but you have to go to hear about it. They then talked a bit about dropshipping and how it is the KEY to success, then they told the only lie of the night about how people can go to your site, order something and some of the money is “Wired” to your paypal account while the rest of the money is sent to your dropshipper and it all happens while you sleep with nothing from you. I talked to them later and they said that it really is not possible to do this but they just wanted to make it simple to understand for the people there, and I found that acceptable. They talked a lot about dropshipping and that they had a special secret list of dropshippers. I do not know for sure but I would bet you that this is NOT included in the $3,600 that it is an extra charge. They also talked about 1 on 1 consulting and how important it is, this may or may not cost more.

So here is what I what I think about it all. If someone is clueless about what is out there, and they are really motivated to build a business and need someone to hold their hand they could be successful with this system. (But how many smart motivated business people are clueless, they don’t coexist.) There is always the few successful people in any group. But for the VAST majority of these people it will keep their hopes up, BUT they will never make a penny, and many will spend thousands. I think their products seems good, I have seen others sell less for more money, but I also know if you look you can get much more for much less. Of course when people pay a lot for a little many of them get angry and upset, I just found a blog that some of these people have created, visit it HERE. Be SURE to read that site before you do business with this company.

One really annoying thing is that during the break I started talking to some other people there about computers and how I sell them. One of the StoresOnline people came up to me and was not happy, he basically asked me to sit down and stop talking to people. It was too late, I already gave them my business card.

I am really impressed with their presentation and how it all works, it was very slick, and I am sure they make a ton of money. They really controlled the room, no one could talk to each other and every time someone tried to ask a question they would stop them, one guy even got mad and yelled over them, but he was ignored. Who would of thought you could sell $100 worth of stuff for thousands and still have people lining up. They are able to send out targeted direct mail, then hold a meeting, give away free food, and free gifts and STILL make a profit. I need to figure out how to do this with one of my businesses. Maybe get business owners in a room and talk to them for 90 minutes on how to get the most out of computer technology, then sell them computers, and show them send out cards. At least I would only talk to people who I knew could use the product, not just any dumb person with a credit card like these guys do.

Computer Entry: How to Buy a Computer Monitor

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This article is part of my Computer series, click here for the list of other entries.

When it comes to monitors there are many things to consider. I will tell you more than you probably ever wanted to know, at the end of this you will be a monitor expert and know more than almost any clerk at any store you walk in to. It may be a bit long with stick with it, you will be glad you did.

First we will start with the difference between a CRT and a LCD. By now the LCD has won the game for new monitors, but many still debate whether to keep the OLD CRT or to upgrade to the LCD. Well there are many reasons that a LCD is better, the only reason to use a CRT is if you don’t have the money to get a LCD.

But even with that it will still cost you. The average 19” LCD uses only about 50W of power, while the average 19” CRT is over 250W. In Arizona we have cheap power, costing only on average 9 cents per KWH. After taxes and such it is about 12 cents. If you count the heat created by the CRT and the power to cool this heat during the summer you would have to count about 24 cents per KWH during the summer and 12 cents during the winter. This is an average of 18 cents per KWH. A 200 usage will result in 3.6 cents per hour. I use my monitor about 10 hours a day, 7 days a week. That is $2.50 per week. With an average 19” monitor costing less than $170 it would only take 68 weeks for a new 19” LCD to pay for itself. If this is not reason enough to get one then let me give you a few more.

The LCD monitor will take up much less space on your desk.
The LCD monitor will allow you to work longer with less eye strain. Think of a CRT monitor as a particle accelerator aimed at your head.
The LCD monitor has a much crisper picture.
The LCD monitor is much less heavy in case you need to move it.

So now that you see clearly that a LCD is the best choice PLEASE don’t do what most of my customers want to do, they simply select a size and shop for the absolute cheapest LCD of that size. That is a very bad idea. Like anything else you get what you pay for, and in monitors if you pay a bit more you really get a lot extra. Well there are a lot of things to look for.

LCD monitors work by having a white light in the background, then each pixel blocks anywhere from no light to all of the light, it does it in Red, Green and in Blue. So to make purple it will only block the green, red and blue shine through and purple is created. Most LCD monitors can block each color in any of 256 different levels. This gives each pixel 16.8 million different color combos.

Monitors also have different speeds at which they can change these colors. Most are 5ms, meaning 5/100th of a second, or 20 times per second. Most humans can only see about 20-25 updates per second, the older you are the lower this number is. For anything except video or games 5ms is fine, but if you want to have faster refresh rates 2ms is a much better for only a little more money. The eyes of most people can not tell the difference between 2ms and 5ms so don’t get all caught up in this. Beware that some cheap monitors are 8 or even 10ms, this costs them less to make and many unaware customers looking only at price buy these, even people with bad eyes can notice video slowness in these monitors.

As I said there is a white light at the back, if you want great bright graphics you need this light to be brighter. They measure this brightness in cd/m2 which means Candle power per square meter. A rating of 250 cd/m2 would be like having 250 candles in a square meter. For me the higher this rating is the better. If you are in a bright room such as an office you really need to focus on this feature. Again many cheap monitors are in the 200-250 range, simple because it is cheaper and people often only look at price. 300 is actually much nicer and the most popular brightness level, but for a bit more money you can find 400 and 500 cd/m2 models.

Now because your pixels are blocking the light you have to be concerned of how good of a job they are doing. This is called Contrast Ration. 500:1 means that the whitest white is 500 times brighter than the darkest dark. We already know exactly how bright the white is by the brightness measurement so what we really are talking about is how dark the monitor can get. Dark is great for video games, and movies. If you are in a typical office environment just doing normal typical office stuff then forget this number, it means very little to you. But if you want great crisp colors and dark darks in you movie then look for a large ratio. 700:1 and 800: are good and very common, only the cheapest or oldest monitors will have numbers lower than this. 1000:1 is the most common, but 3000:1 is getting very popular among high end quality monitors.

Now you have to decide if you want speakers or not, I have a great set of speakers so I don’t care either way, but for most offices your computer probably does not have speakers. About half of these monitors have at least basic speakers. Because I don’t need them I will look for one without them or one that has them hidden. If you need them you may want to look at the different sound out put but I have found that almost all of them are a very poor 1 to 2 Watts of power.

Now you will see monitors that are grey, or black or silver, even white. For me a black border is by far the best. It is much less distracting to the eyes.

You also need to decide if you want the Widescreen 16:9 ratio or the normal 4:3 ratio. Because the size of the screen is measured diagonally a monitor of the same diagonal size that is 4:3 will be about 10% larger than a widescreen. But if you are watching a movie and 40% of your screen is the black bars on the top and bottom then your movie will be larger on a 16:9. For me I like to have wide screen monitors, because I can then put things side by side. It is better for writing things surfing the web. Humans see much wider than they see high, so it makes sense.

Now you also have the choice of inputs with most nicer LCD monitors. The cheapest ones only have VGA (15-Din), but the nicer ones also offer DVI and recently HDMI. Some even have component input. If your monitor has more than 1 then you usually have a button that lets you select which input you would like to use at any given time, this is useful for the people with more computers than monitors, like techs often are. DVI is digital and if your computer has a DVI out I would look for a DVI monitor for sure, it is much nicer, but if you computer only has VGA then only get DVI if it is free or you are fairly sure you are upgrading soon.

I saved the two most important considerations for last, Size and Resolution. Most people think too much about money and they instantly think that smaller is better, but in todays market a 15” and a 17” screen are the same price, and in many cases the 15” is more money. Also a 19” is often only $20 more than a 17” and a 22” is often only $40 more than the 19”. For most people I suggest a 19” for offices and a 22” for home use. If you use the computer a lot at the office then get the 22”. See you are already paying for the monitor, and if you want to upgrade at a time in the future you will not be able to get the full value for your smaller one, thus it will cost much more to upgrade later than it will to do so today, so buy the size you really want right now.

Next is resolution, this comes back to the eyes question. Most sizes have a resolution that makes up about 90% of the market for that size. Almost all 19” widescreen monitors are 1440×900 while most 22” monitors are 1680×1050. Every now and then you can find monitors for about 20-30% more money that jump to the next level, such as a 1680×1050 for a 19” Monitor. Most monitors are designed for what looks good at that size. I would only suggest someone to go to the higher resolution if they have very good way above average eyesight.

You should always try to run a LCD at the highest resolution that it can support, if you don’t then your images will look very bad. It works like this. If the monitor can display 1280 pixels wide but you select 1024 then that means that 5 pixels in the monitor are trying to display every 4. So they will not line up, it works like this. Imagine pixel 1,2,3,4,5 and data pixels a,b,c,d. Pixel 1 will show the color of a and 25% the color of b. Pixel 2 will show 75% the color of b and 50% the color c. Pixel 3 will be the average of half the color of b and half of c. This is easy math for your computer and monitor but it will make everything look blended and blurry. For all the people who can not see well lowering your resolution will make your screen look even worse than running at the correct resolution and resizing as much as you can to make things larger.

One of the first things that I tell people is to think about their eyes. How large do they like text. Computers today STILL mostly render things based upon resolution. In a dream world you should always run your monitor at the highest resolution, so things would be the most smooth but be able to resize things based upon your taste BUT this is NOT the case. Unfortunately MANY things in computers are still a set number of pixels in size. At least in vista they allow you to change most of your OS to make it larger, you really only have this problem on the web. So if a person with bad vision buys a really large 24” monitor and has a resolution of 1920×1200 and they use that resolution things will still be small, so they sent the resolution to something like 1280×768, now things are only about half as crisp and clear as they should be, there is no winning this game. They could always use the zoom feature of their OS but that is not very user friendly. I hope they fix this problem but I don’t see this ever being fixed.

Last, monitors die sometimes, also they often have dead pixels, a pixels that will not change to the correct color all of the time. Most of these are covered under warranty, but many companies will not return a monitor unless it has at least 6 or 8 dead pixels. You want to be clear of this before you buy. And if you are buying a really cheap monitor then test it before you leave the store. Almost every year a new company starts up and dumps a ton of cheap monitors on the market, they sell millions of units promising a 3 or even 5 year warranty, then after a year they go out of business, change the name on all the boxes and do it all over again. Now there are some really good quality monitors from companies you may never have heard of, just because you have not heard of them does not mean that they are not good, but if an expert has not heard of them beware. We currently sell Hanns-G for many of our mid range monitors and we sell Samsung or Viewsonic for our high end monitors. We have had great experiences with all three of these. We have had bad luck with KDS, Acer and a few other brands that are now gone.

So bottom line, think about what your needs are. Don’t shop for the cheapest. If you have more questions then contact me, I will be happy to help you select your monitor, and I will probably be able to find a much better one at a better price than you ever thought.

This ended up being much longer than I thought, thanks for reading all of it, please forward this to anyone you know who is thinking of getting a new monitor, they will be happy you did. Leave a comment if you liked this blog.