Topic: Computing and my ignorance

[Clark Kent]

Yesterday, in my most recent step in my crusade to build a wireless network at home, I went to Circuit city in a small city called St Cloud, MN on my way home from a medical appointment.  I wandered around, asked about a settlement case with microsoft that I had received a letter about, and then went around looking at some of the hardware, with particular emphasis on wirless.  Well, a guy was routed to me, and we got into a very interesting discussion that seemed to be over my head.  I was buying it all pretty well, until I made mention of how pleased I was with being able to run over 6 hours off the battery in my handy dandy high speed low drag iBook G4 to my exceedingly anti mac salesman.  His response to me was that this was unimpressive, and that centrino notebooks ran 10-18 hours on battery power.  This sounded fishy to me, so I asked some IT guys at school, who just kinda laughed. 
With that, I assume I was right, and this guy was shoving a pile of bull up my posterior.  While I'm pleased I was able to tell he was full of it from the outset, it remeinded me of something.  At one point in my life I knew many many specs on many many computers, both mac and PC, despite my mac oriented mind.  This knowledge began to slowly disapear and become outdated after I went into the army, and didn't have the opportuninty (or money) to keep informed on such things.  It seriously bothered me (and still does) how badly out of date I had become in this area, and now I'm resolved to catch back up again.
As such, ANY info that the computer gurus on this board might have would prove quite useful.
The areas I need to get up to date in especially are:
-processors (speeds, general architecture, pros, cons)
-changes in motherboards, and differences in different types of memory
-networking and other connectivity issues (like bluetooth)
-Operating systems and the similarities and differences between them(such as my crappy win ME and WIn XP)

I've asked soem of these questions before on the taldren boards, but those forums are now gone and I can't look up the info anymore, since much of it I didn't bookmark.  Links and references are great, and will be appreciated, as would any tutorials that anyone would like to type up, but I understand that typing up lengthy explanations is not on the top of anyone's list of things to do.   
Also, any comment on my experience at this cicuit city would also be welcome.
TIA

[AlienLXIX]

Circuit City isn't worth it to me unless it's Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving) other than that we go there just to check prices and then we go to either the NEX/PX on the bases or CompUSA.  At least they try to learn their dept.  But like always I check out what I or Ferret want to get online or friends who are hella lot more informed than I am.

It's a cold arsed wet day in Hawaii and I am not awake yet so if that previous paragraft doesn't sound intelligent I blame it on the rain!   

[Don Karnage]

well the best thing to do about a laptop is go to the website of your labtop and see what the says about the battery, and also look at the other who also have labtop to compare and see what the says, these place are just saleman and dont know about computer, also find a small computershop and ask them, for the rest i don't know much my self and i don't have money to put on magazine that use toomuch technical term and i get lost in it, and ask here and if you can go to some chatroom (not just here) and ask other, they might help you.

[Gambler]

It's not the CPU that eats up the battery on a laptop.  Okay, it helps or hurts, but that's not where the majority of power is consumed.

It's the monitor, hard drive, whether you're accessing your cd/dvd drive and if your wireless network adapter is struggling to find a connection.

[Clark Kent]

Yeah, I kinda figured out quick fast and in a hurry how much poer the display uses.  Even running close to highest brightness and reading multiple CDs  etc etc I stillhad several hours of use. 
My last PC was from cicuit cuty, and since then I've become increasingly dissatisfied with circuit city.  This is not the first tiem someone gave me a bold faced lie at one of their stores.
Still, I'd rather be able to know the difference between factual computer specs and how they work rather than going on what seems to be reasonable and not and trying to decipher a lie when I come accross it.

[Javora]

I researched my current computer for about a year before I put the thing together last year.  I didn't want to get burned again after dealing with that stupid Dell.     I spent a lot of time on the web looking at product reviews on Tech sites, on-line computer parts dealers, and spent some time reading some computer magazines.  Now obviously with a laptop you're probably not going to be putting one together, especially a Mac.  But if you ever decide to put together a desktop, take some time and research the products that are out there now and what is coming in the next year.  The last thing you want is to build/buy a system and have it be out of date or un-upgradeable by the time you first set the system up.

I agree with Alien about Circuit City, they are pretty much useless to me unless I need something small and need it right a way.  But then I do a lot of my computer supply purchases on-line which makes a lot of computer stores useless to me.  As for the wireless router IMHO I would wait until the 802.11i is hitting the market unless you want something sooner.  A couple of good places for research on routers would be:

http://www.practicallynetworked.com/

Hope this helps.

[Clark Kent]

I haven't checked out the networking site you mentionedjavora, but it looks promising.  Unfortunately, i didn't even know there was a 806.11i coming out until last night, a couple days AFTER I had already bought an Airport Extreme base station which is 806.11g.  There is another point in the problem with the Circuit City guy- he claimed there would be nothing more along the lines of 806.11x, they would somply move on to a whole new standard.  Lying little punk.  If i ever do buy something again at circuit city, you'd better believe I won't be accepting any help from their personell.
Also of note- my iBook is the newest one that will be on this little network, and the only one currently that is already WiFI equipped.  It has an Airport Extreme card in it (806.11g), and while upgrading it will most likely be easy, I don't plan on doing it just the same.  That in mind, only one other computer on this network will be 806.11g capable, the others are a little too old as far as I can tell, so I'm looking at mostly an 806.11b network. 
Now I'm off to look at your website, thanks 
Brian