Choosing the right computer the Andrew Fishkin way

I've made no secret of the fact that Los Angeles attorney Andrew Fishkin, who writes the Best Tools for the Job column for Low End Mac, is one of my favorite tech writers, and today he provides a very helpful guide to choosing the best -- and usually used -- computer for everybody from "the technophobe," to "the office worker," "the road warrior" and even "the family."

Although previously a Mac partisan, Andrew has recently swung further into the IBM camp -- He really does want and need the best tool for the job, and in this column, he recommends everything from the IBM Thinkpad X22 laptop (both he and his young daughter have one) to an older Power Mac G4, and old-but-fast Pentium 4, even a 400 MHz Pentium II running Windows 2000 (which is suspiciously close to This Old PC, my home machine that has a 333 MHz processor and that same OS).

He even puts in a plug for the new and recent big-screen iMacs, especially the 20-inch model.

There's much good advice on both what to buy and how to keep it running:

For the office worker, cheap PCs are a great way to go for the simple reason that they are really cheap. I have a $300 PC from last March and a $250 PC from December, and either one of them can blow the doors off of the highest-end workstation of four-years-ago. They really are that fast - and upgradable, too!

Don't forget the older computers you already have.Don't forget the older computers you already have. Any Mac or PC from the last five years or so remains a very powerful and capable computer.

Good advice all around -- and listen to his advice on using a router with a firewall; also the wisdom of a clean install on an old PC, which is guaranteed to de-crud and speed up any OS.

Photo: A Power Mac G4, the likes of which are still being used at the Daily News.