What’s Your Type?

If you have to look at your keyboard every time you type a letter, then these touch-typing programs and games are what you need

Whether you’re a journalist, a programmer or just a school pupil doing coursework, having the ability to touch type can be a real gamechanger. Of course, what you write matters more than how you write it, but if you’re not wasting time with an inefficient two-fingered search-and-peck typing system, then that’s time you can better spend on research and fine-tuning your work. It also means there’s less of a gap between when you think something and when you type it.

Is This The End For Fake Reviews?

Not every online review can be trusted. Some companies write their own – or pay someone else to say nice things about them. The days of fake reviews may be numbered, though. Sarah Dobbs investigates

Online reviews can be incredibly useful, and reading them has become an indispensable part of shopping, no matter what you’re buying: reviews of clothes can tell you if sizes tend to run big or small, reviews of washing machines can tell you if they’re reliable or tend to make a lot of noise, reviews of cars can tell you how fuel efficient they tend to be, or whether the upholstery stains easily… You get the idea.

How To Get The Best Deal On A New PC

Here are a few tips to ensure you don’t pay too much...

If you simply don’t have the time or enthusiasm to build a new PC for yourself, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with buying a pre-build instead. Indeed, while in the past it may have been cheaper to construct a system on your own time, and hunting around for the best deals on parts a way of saving serious amounts of cash, these days the price difference is often bordering on negligible. Indeed, in many cases, pre-builds can work out even cheaper than the parts inside them would be at retail, thanks to the bulk-rate discounts manufacturers can get. There’s no doubt you surrender a fair amount of control over the components your system, but is it worth it for the amount of money you can save?

To help you get the best deal on a pre-build system, we’ve assembled our best hints and tips for buying full systems – everything from where to look to what to look for. Follow this advice and you’ll end up with a PC you can be smug about – if not for what’s in it, then for how much it cost!

Memory And Storage Deals

Give your PC a quick and easy boost with these upgrades…

When building a system, it’s a common mistake to overlook the memory and storage components in favour of faster processors and graphics cards. But you might be surprised to learn that slow memory and inadequate storage can cause significant bottlenecks, the likes of which no faster processors will be able to remedy. No matter how fast the data can be processed, it still has to be moved to a processor – from the storage, via the RAM.

Think of it as being a bit like a coal furnace on a train: a bigger furnace will burn faster, giving more speed, but eventually you reach a point where you can’t burn coal any faster. What you need is someone to shovel coal quicker. This, roughly, illustrates the problem with many systems. Slow hard drives and small RAM capacities mean that the fastest processors are forced to idle while waiting for data to be transferred. And that’s why we’ve come up with this selection of memory and storage recommendations for you to help speed up your system.

Graphic Card And Monitor Deals

Give yourself a visual treat, with this fine selection of goodies…

It’s remarkable how much improving the look of your system can make it feel like something new and exciting. You might not have changed the internals much, but your desktop is the main point of contact you have with a desktop computer. Upgrade that and it’ll seem as though everything old is new again.

This means two things: finding a new monitor and ideally a graphics card to go with it. Both are expensive components, but they’re worth the money: you’re guaranteed to appreciate their performance every time you switch your PC on. In this piece, we’ve looked at the various monitors and graphics cards available to help you find some of the best deals. Follow our advice, and in no time at all, your computer is going to look better than ever!

CPU And Motherboard Deals

Getting the right motherboard and processor combination – at the right price – is key

The starting point of any system is its CPU and Motherboard combination. These two components are built to fit one another with a particular socket and chipset combination, so it makes sense to choose them both at the same time.

When choosing a CPU or a motherboard there are a whole confusing host of options open to you, all which are fairly similar in design and compatibility, but different in function and capability. To help you understand what will suit your needs best, we’ll explain which processors are good for which purposes, explain how to match them up with the right motherboard, and point you in the direction of some deals and offers that might help sway your decision one way or the other.