By Oo Gin Lee

WHY pay more for a workstation when a PC will do just fine?

Well, in certain industries such as animation and architectural design which require computers with stability and high performance, nothing but the very best will do.

Workstations may share the same architecture as PCs but they offer much more.

First off is uncompromising power and stability.

Top-of-the-line processors - the same used in data centre servers - are found in workstations. The memory chips used in workstations are called Error Checking and Correction memory. These are much more stable than the standard RAM sticks used in PCs.

Some users, like those working in finance and digital content creation, require multiple screens displaying different information and data at the same time. With workstations, it is possible to link up to eight monitors to a single computer.

Users do not want to waste time worrying about whether their software meets the system requirements of their machines.

With some brands of workstations like HP (left), the drivers, hardware and software are put through rigorous testing before they are certified to work with resource-hungry applications used in computer-aided design/computer-aided manufacturing (commonly known as CAD/CAM), video-editing and animation.

For businesses which have their computers running round the clock, the power-efficient workstations can mean a huge cut to their large electricity bills.

This story was first published in The Straits Times Digital Life.

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