If you asked a friend or colleague what his new PC was like and he said "Housed in a beige tower casing, my new computer is powered by a 450MHz Intel Pentium II processor backed by 128MB of fast SDRAM memory and a 12GB hard drive connected to the 440BX motherboard's primary UDMA33/EIDE channel", you'd be quite justified in hitting him over the head with a spade. All he's given you is the specification. He hasn't told you what the machine is actually like. A far more useful piece of information would be "It's fast, but it crashes every five minutes and the keyboard's crap".

After all, if you're buying a new car, you don't really care that the variable valve timing brings a second cam into play above 6,500rpm, or that the combustion process is 3.7 percent efficient. You want to know how fast it is, how economical it is, and whether it's suitable for your needs and wallet. And maybe how cool it looks in the office car park. So why can't the computer business be that simple?

The trouble is, the computer industry was started by enthusiasts - yes, some of them wore sandals - who played with vast collections of valves and transistors because they enjoyed it. Don't ask me why; I wasn't there. Even in the 80s, most PC users were frowned upon as being weird and slightly musty. Saying you had a home computer was the social equivalent of saying that your syphilis was getting much better now, thanks. And while computers could barely scrape together enough processing power to calculate 47 x 56, all was fine and tickety-boo.

Then, in the early 90s, some bright sparks realised that there was money to be made from computers, so they sent in the marketing men and it all became rather corporate and suity. Computers became faster and shinier, but because the marketing men still needed the enthusiasts to do all the hard work, the enthusiasts decided to protect their interests (they may not have had fashion sense, but they weren't daft). They made sure that, instead of just building and using computers, they were 'involved in information technology'. That meant buzzwords, complicated algorithms, and a raft of new industries built up around the computer. After all, the enthusiasts had friends, and they all wanted jobs too.

But, as time goes by, the enthusiasts are being out-numbered by people who, bizarrely, just want to use a computer to get some work done (actually, these people have existed in a minority for many years, worshipping a strange multi-coloured, half-eaten apple symbol, but nobody took them seriously). After all, do you care that one PC has SDRAM DIMMs and the other doesn't? Probably not. Remember that there was a time when all car users were enthusiasts, too. Some still are, but the majority wouldn't know a cam-belt if it tried to strangle them, and nor should they.

There's a point to all this. No, really, there is. At IT Reviews we're trying to write reviews that give you the truth rather than just the facts (ouch, cliché alert). We include specifications where we believe they're necessary, but ultimately we also tell you whether a product is good, bad or abominable. Is this what you want? Judging by the site hits it seems to be, but let us know; would you prefer to see more specifications and less talk, or the other way around?

Anyway, the next time someone gives you the detailed specification of a PC instead of telling you whether it's actually any good, don't stand for it. Say "Truth, not facts" and carry a spade with you wherever you go.

Tags: personal computer synchronous dynamic random access memory dimm specification (technical standard) apple hardware ibm microsoft windows