> I realize that this subject has been discussed before, but at that time i
> wasn't in need of building a new computor. Would appreciate it if it could
> be explained what the differences are between all the different
> cpu's on the
> market today, Thunderbird, Athlon, Duron, (which I realize are AMD) the
> pentium chips (III & IV), celeron, coppermine, etc.
> My system will be used for small business applications, which include
> extensive internet useage, spreadsheets, databases, some number crunching,
> web page design and of course wordprocessing. I also will be running the
> "seti" program in the background.

        This topic can become much more cultish then it should. If for one prefer
AMD CPUs, they are generally much faster for the same buck, use DDR memory
versus RDRAM (I've personally decided to boycott Rambus memory for various
reasons) and are more upwardly upgradable (Intel will be abandoning it's
current socket for P4 so anybody buying a P4 now will be stuck with a board
that won't go much higher).

> I would also appreciate a recomendation as to a monthly computor
> magazine(s)
> that will help me to stay on top of changes to come.

        None. All of those magazines have become basically huge advertisments for
whatever company is paying them, they rarely have reviews that fairly
compare competing products, that's if they compare the product at all! (they
often say that product A is great, but they don't say HOW great it is
compared to product B, worthless to me). I prefer the only resources, they
are far superior IMHO. My two favourites are www.anandtech.com and
www.tomshardware.com. For keeping up with tech news nobody beats the plain
honesty of www.theregister.co.uk. TTYL

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