While you may not need a fully loaded car, it is often sensible to have a fully configured personal computer. A full configuration for a state-of-the-art personal computer system includes a color monitor with high-quality screen display, at least 2MB (and up to 8MB) of RAM, two floppy disk drives (one for 5¼-inch and one for 3½-inch disks), and one hard disk with at least 30MB of storage capacity. A color display is useful if you plan to use graphics software. In addition, many non graphic programs, even word processing, are primarily intended for a color monitor, and can be awkward to use on a monochrome display.
Many applications have grown more complex and have added more features, requiring more RAM. For example, word processing programs often includea spelling or grammar checker. Complex spreadsheets, filled with numbersand calculations, require large amounts of memory too. Generally speakingthe more RAM, the better. It is not uncommon to use applications that require most of the 640K of main memory. Likewise, hard disk drives become more useful when working with large programs that come on multiple disks. Without a hard disk, you have to swap the floppies in and out of the floppydisk drive when you need to perform different operations. A hard disk allows youto store the entire program, with no disk swapping. Programs often run moresmoothly from a hard disk.
