Surfdom Starts With a Modem
Q. All I am interested in is surfing the Internet. I don’t need to use the equipment for anything else. What would be the cheapest good equipment required to do this? What about used equipment?
--Jay E. Schwartzbine
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A. Your question seems simple, but the answer depends on what you mean by “surfing the Internet.”
The World Wide Web portion of the Internet is loaded with graphics and sound and video. It is the frontier of personal computing and is rapidly evolving to take advantage of all of the capabilities of the highest-performance PCs. Surfing the Web is best done with a multimedia-capable computer, either a Macintosh or Windows PC. Windows 95 is better than Windows 3.1, which means you need a more powerful computer.
But a large component of the Internet, Usenet, is plain old text, easily searched, read and responded to with minimal computing power. You can also browse the Web without graphics, though you miss out on what the Web is really all about.
No matter what part of the Internet you use, you should have a fast, 28.8-kilobit-per-second modem, which costs about $100. You should be able to find a new computer with basic multimedia capabilities--either a fast 486 or slow Pentium with the 8 megabytes of memory required for Windows 95 (16 megabytes is better)--for less than $1,200, including color monitor. For double that, you could get a fast Pentium that will better handle more complex Web sites.
You can also surf without a computer by using one of the new WebTV devices offered by Sony and Phillips Consumer Electronics for $300 to $350, which connect to your television and provide access via WebTV Networks of Palo Alto (in which Times Mirror Co., parent of The Times, is an investor).
Buying used computers is a subject in itself. The best advice is to be wary, buy from someone you know, and get someone whose computer knowledge you trust to help you evaluate the condition of the computer.
E-mail questions to cutting.edge@latimes.com, fax to (213) 237-4712, or mail to Answers, c/o Richard O’Reilly, Business Section, Los Angeles Times, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, CA 90053.
