Computer and Networking Lab

CS 102

Sept. 12, 2003

Introduction

We have a few reasons for taking part in this lab:

1. To become familiar with navigating through a few online stores to, in this case, find RAM for our PC and also to compare a handful of new PCs.

2. To study how Internet connection speeds vary over the course of a day here on our fast network and possibly at home over a modem.

3. To reorganize the bookmarks in our browser.

Lab

1. Log onto your workstation and start the Internet Explorer browser.

   Visit the class home page and find the HTML version of this lab. It has all the links you need below, saving you a lot of typing!

2. Go to this web site: Crucial.com (http://www.crucial.com/). Look up the price of upgrading your PC's memory by 128 MB.

   Try to answer these questions:

   1. What do EDO, SDRAM, and DDR stand for? How do they compare?

   2. What's the difference between PC 100 SDRAM and PC 133 SDRAM?

   3. What is parity? Do I need it?

3. Visit one (or two) of these web sites and ``shop'' for a new PC. Don't forget that a monitor and printer are often not included! If you need those, price them out as well.
   1. Dell (http://www.dell.com/).

   2. Gateway (http://gateway.com/).

   3. Best Buy (http://www.bestbuy.com/).

   4. Circuit City (http://www.circuitcity.com/).

   5. eMachines (http://emachines.com/).

   Answer these questions:
   1. Would you be comfortable making an online PC purchase?

   2. Did the PCs you looked at have enough RAM?

   3. Did you add or delete anything from the basic PC configuration we discussed? If so, what? Why?

   4. If you visited more than one site, where did you find the best price? Was it much of a difference?

4. Visit the Bandwidth Place (http://bandwidthplace.com/speedtest/index.html) and test the speed of your Internet connection. Run the test at least five times on different days and at different times of the day. If you run enough tests you may find some patterns. What do they seem to be?

5. Edit your bookmarks, arranging them into a nicely organized, hierarchical structure. (If you don't currently have any bookmarks, visit some of your favorite web sites and bookmark them). Delete any bookmarks that are of no interest to you.

6. You're done for the day. You may log out now and leave.