You can certainly get by with a less powerful computer than my recommended system. But this is a great system for the majority of business users: it won’t need upgrading for a long time and it will allow your business to keep up with developments in communications, the Internet, and sound and voice-enabled applications.

By the way, I’m writing this in mid-2005. You may need to adjust the specs upwards if you’re reading it in 2006 or later.

• An Intel Pentium or AMD processor running at 2.8GHz or higher.
• 256M RAM.
• 60Gb hard disk drive (get a larger drive if you produce a large volume of documents or use multimedia in your work).
• Either a combo DVD and CD writer, or a DVD writer/CD reader.
• An external USB hard drive for easy backups. I like the Maxtor One Touch series.
• 128M graphics card.
• 17" flat-screen monitor. Do not buy the cheapest available monitor or the one offered with your system; get the next model up if possible. Cheaper flat-screen monitors frequently have problems with missing pixels (they appear as dots of unchanging colour on your screen) and poor resolution.
• A soundcard.
• Speakers and microphone. Get yourself a good USB headset microphone if you want to use VoIP (Internet telephones) or dictate using speech recognition software.
• 4 USB 2.0 connectors. If you have older printers or equipment, also get 1 serial connector and 1 parallel connector.
• Cable or DSL high-speed Internet access. If you rarely use the Internet, then a dial-up connection may be sufficient; in that case, you’ll need a 56kbps fax/modem. If you get high-speed access, your Internet service provider will usually provide the modem.
• A quality keyboard.
• Microsoft or Logitech mouse with scrolling wheel.
• 10/100 PCI Ethernet networking card, or similar. You may need two network cards if you intend to use high-speed Internet and network your computer to other computers in your organisation.
• Windows XP Home Edition or Professional Edition.
• Colour inkjet or black-and-white laser printer. A really good all-round purchase for the office is the Hewlett-Packard Officejet 7310 All-in-One. I used not to recommend all-in-ones because they rarely performed all functions well. But the HP 7310 is a great business printer, photo printer, scanner, copier and fax machine, with excellent documentation. For lasers, I recommend the Brother HL-5140. Whatever you do when buying a laser, get a model that holds the paper flat, such as the Brother HL-5140. These work much better than the gravity-fed models (where the paper feeds in from above). Make sure you buy a printer cable as well. Note that model numbers differ from country to country, so look for your local equivalent of the models mentioned here.