Computer Motherboards Mainboards

Motherboards or Mainboards are the vital backbone of every OEM Computer system. The motherboard holds the Central Processing Unit (CPU) and every other peripheral connects directly to it. The Motherboards manufactured today are quite different from those made even just 5 years ago. Computer Mainboards today are expected to perform alot more functions that used to be off loaded by add on peripherals just years ago. For Example: Today, the motherboard will have built into it's unit, IDE Controllers, Floppy controllers, Video Cards, Network Cards and Sound Cards. Just a few years ago, this was not common practice. You had to buy your video card separately, your network card separately and your sound card separately. In today's competitive tecnology world, manufacturer's are trying to find an edge every way possible. One way they are able to bring costs down is to create all-on-one units. These all-one-one motherboards of today present some positives and negatives. They decrease cost, make everything simpler, but the downside to this is that it creates less freedome, less flexibility and less upgradeability. If you're looking to tweak your computer system and add all the top of the line parts, then buying a motherboard with all the mentioned add-on peripherals would not be appropriate for you.		99% of the motherboards today are manufactured out of China and Taiwan. Making it cheap is key to survival in the computer age. They have become commodity items. Motherboards continue to improve their technology and reliability ratings. With assistance from Intel and AMD, designs appear to be getting more homogenious amongst the brands. Here is a list of the top motherboard brands as they stand today: Abit, Acorp, Asus, Biostar, Chaintech, Decision Maker, DFI, ECS, Epox, Firstech, Gigabyte, Intel, MSI, PC Chips, Sapphire, Shutle Spacewalker, Supermicro, Tyan and Via. One gripe I have with all computer makers today is that they don't add enough ram to the systems. They'll gladly sell you a Windows XP system, Celeron 2Ghz, with 128MB Ram. ???? Windows XP will not run very well on 128MB Ram! In a system like this, I'd recommend at least 512 to 1GB Ram. On top of that, they'll load so much trash on your computer that your system is basically a plug-in advertising bill board. I have to spend the next hour or so cleaning out the computer so I'm not spammed with junk ads that exist right on my computer. Along with this, they'll configure your system to look real nice, with flashy desktop settings and pretty pictures, but what they don't realize is that all these extra features hog up computer resources and make your new XP system feel like a Windows 3.11 system running on an old 286 system. I really can't understand how some of you folks can use your computer this way! They run like slow fat dogs!