Hardware Software Project
Sell a Computer System Presentation

Overview:
For this assignment, imagine that you own a company that makes custom computer systems.  A prospective customer, Mr. Guarino, has given you a budget of $1300 for a computer system and wants you to show him what you can offer within that budget.  To do this, you will make a PowerPoint slideshow to present your proposed computer system to Mr. Guarino.

He wants his computer to be capable of doing just about anything but he doesn’t expect it to be a top of the line gaming computer.  Meaning, Mr. Guarino would like to play games and edit videos but he doesn’t expect his computer to play all games on their maximum settings or edit videos faster than any other computer.  He doesn't care about the brand names of the components except for that he does want an Intel processor not an AMD processor. Mr. Guarino expects a complete computer system which would include everything needed for him to use it as soon as it is setup.  Accessories like a printer, a scanner or a web cam are not essential.  You do not need to include such accessories.

To see a video of a good example of this project made by a previous student, click here.

Important Notes:
ALL work for this project must be done in school. There will be no excuses of doing all the work at home but your computer broke or got a virus or you lost your thumb drive.
Do not copy and paste pictures from the Internet but rather save the pictures to your folder and then insert them into your slideshow. This will prevent you from getting formatting information and/or links that could be embedded in the pictures. Also, if anything happens to your Powerpoint file or an individual slide, you will still have your pictures saved.
Be sure to save all your files (powerpoint, excel, pictures, music, etc.) to your new pc folder so that they can be checked for grading. If the music file is not in your folder it will not play when your present your project to the class and it will definitely be better with music.

How to setup your project, pick parts and keep track of prices:
Video: make new pc system folder
Video: excel spreadsheet for new pc system
Video: price vs performance for pc parts
Video: match cpu mobo ram and hdd for new pc system

The Spreadsheet (this will count as one test grade):
Create an Excel spreadsheet to list the descriptions and prices of your components.

The Presentation (this will count as two test grades):
You have decided to make a dynamic slideshow presentation using Microsoft PowerPoint instead of making a static document like a brochure or catalog.

Your slideshow shall be setup as follows:

• Slide 1: Introduction
• Slides between your introduction slide and your conclusion slide are for presenting each component.  Each component shall be presented on its own slide with some pictures and two to five listed key features of the component.  A key feature is something specific that caused you to choose that component for your customer’s computer.  Do not list a key feature by just stating, for example, that the CPU is really fast but instead state that Intel’s turbo boost 2.0 technology makes this a fast CPU. 
• Your last slide is your conclusion slide.  Be sure to include the total price your customer will need to pay for the complete system, which of course must be $1300 or less.  Remember to thank your customer for the opportunity to propose a system and be sure to ask your customer to buy your system.

Create a High Quality Slideshow Presentation:
For each slide, you need to format the background, add pictures and add text.  Slides shall be dynamic enough to keep our attention which means that slides shall have slide transitions and most slide elements shall be animated.  Keep the sounds on animations to a minimum, one or two for the entire slideshow would be fine, since you will have music playing during your presentation.  Add enough effects to your pictures and text to be clearly obvious; meaning everyone watching your slideshow will know that you have applied picture and text effects.  Also, be sure to vary your effects, meaning don’t just apply the same effect a bunch of times.

Overall Quality:
Make a nice looking well put together slideshow that will easily keep the attention of your audience.  There are a bunch of videos on our web site for the basic computer applications course to help them learn to use PowerPoint to make a nice slideshow.  The videos were setup to aid in presenting a vacation slideshow but the techniques can easily be applied to this project.  For example, making the background of a picture of a motherboard transparent would be the same as making the background of a picture of a dolphin transparent.

Video: make folder_start and setup powerpoint_insert slides
Video: prevent blurry pictures
Video: transparent background
Video: insert pictures and apply picture effects
Video: insert text boxes and apply text box effects
Video: amount of text on a slide
Video: format background and apply background effects
Video: add transitions to slides
Video: add animations to elements
Video: obtain song from youtube
Video: add music
Video: add sounds

Things to Avoid:
Points will be deducted for any obvious things that make the presentation look bad.  Things that look bad are blurry pictures, pictures with rectangular boxes around them instead of being transparent, too much copy and pasted text, boring pictures, using built-in design templates, etc.  Also, although required slides can have backgrounds as pictures, they shall not be ONLY background pictures.

Important Features of SOME Components:
Processor /CPU – Intel model (I3, I5 or I7), frequency/speed, number of cores, cache size, included technologies (hyper threading, turbo boost, etc.), supported memory, socket type, etc.
Motherboard – socket type (must match cpu socket type), manufacturer, chipset/northbridge, supported chipset technologies, supported memory (type, speeds, channels and amount), storage controllers (SATA 3Gb/s or SATA 6Gb/s), audio type, lan type, pcie type (3.0 x 16 or 2.0 x 16), usb type (2.0 or 3.0), etc.
Memory/RAM – type, speed, channels and amount (all must be supported by your motherboard)
Hard Drive – interface type (must match motherboard storage controllers), capacity, spindle speed/rpm and cache.
Video Card – manufacturer, gpu manufacturer, gpu series, interface (must match motherboard pcie type), core speed, memory type, memory speed, memory amount, connectors, etc.
Power Supply – manufacturer, wattage, modular or not, cooling fan size, etc.
Case – manufacturer, case type, number of fan ports, size of fan ports, front panel connectors (is usb 3.0 included on front panel?), dust filters, etc.
Monitor – manufacturer, size, aspect ratio, led or not, response time, maximum resolution, brightness, contrast ratio, connectivity, etc.

Resources:
You MUST use one of the three big online computer parts stores which are: www.tigerdirect.com, www.newegg.com and/or www.microcenter.com. Do not use ebay or amazon. There are a lot of reasons for these restrictions on where you will get your parts. Most importantly, the three allowed sources are very good at listing all the specifications for computer parts.

You may get all your parts from the same place or you may get some parts from each one. For instance, Microcenter often seems to have the best prices on processors while Tigerdirect has really good prices on monitors and Newegg has good prices on motherboards. Search around, get the best performance for the lowest price so you can make some good profit while providing your customer with a good system. Making money and making customers happy will make your business succeed.

Sell a Computer System Presentation Grading Guideline

All items are to be bought seperately, that is, no buying of bundles that include two or more components.

Extra credit points will be added for any extra work included that improves your presentation.  Extra work would be things like extra slides, super-special animations, adding something no one else thought of adding, etc.  So, you can score over 100 points.