Sound card and Speakers:

The sound card processes the sound that you hear on your PC. These days sounds cards not only make multimedia application sound great, they also let you compose record and edit your own music.

Display/Monitor:

14” monitors are out. You can get in your some other type of the monitor in 15”, color monitor, 16 inches and 17 inches monitor are available in the market.Nowadays LCD's and Flat Panel Displays ar ver common.

PORTS

Ports are where you plug in peripherals. The mouse and keyboard go into their respective ports. Serial ports take in modems. Parallel ports take in printer, scanners, etc, There are now USB ports for USB printers, scanners, digital cameras, etc. Now there are Fire Wire ports t00-but these are useful for those into video-editing and such tasks that need a lot of data to be transferred in a shot.

Keyboard and Mouse     

There is a range of mice to choose from Look for one that you fell comfortable working with. There are different types of keyboards. Again look for one that doesn’t require you to thump hard to type, feels ergonomic. You could also go for devices go for devices that have programmable buttons/keys.Nowadays cordless keyboards and optical mouses are available in the market.

Software

You need an operating system-the common one is of course, Windows 98. Now the latest version of Windows for the home is Windows XP and Windows 2003.

You need an office suits, or at least programs that do word processing, spreadsheets and presentations. You need a browser to the Web, and an e-mail program. You’ll also need an antivirus, some system diagnostic tools, some graphics programs, and some useful things like media players (to run your movies and play music), file compression tools like WinZip. Then of course, there is a world of games and multimedia titles to explore.