Celeron or Pentium II?

Celeron or Pentium II?

The computer industry is flourishing because of the advent of new, powerful processors. Recently, Intel Corp. released its Pentium II-450 MHz chip: the fastest processor on the planet. But because the chip is overpriced, Intel is also marketing the downgraded version of a PII, the inexpensive Celeron-333 which has a 128K cache compared to the PII’s 512K cache. To potential computer buyers, this situation presents a dilemma because they must decide whether to opt for price (i.e. buy the Celeron) or speed (i.e. buy the PII-450). In an attempt to answer this question, Lincoln Spector of PC World and Christopher Yates of PC Week analyze the two chips in their articles entitled "Double Feature" and "Intel Celeron Cache in With New Power," published in October and August of 1998 respectively. In this paper, a rhetorical and discourse analysis will be performed on the two articles to examine the similar and different strategies used by Spector and Yates in presenting their arguments. The strategies will determine which article is more convincing. Since the articles are present in magazines that pertain to the genre of computer and computer writing, it is first also necessary to analyze the genre.

Comparing and contrasting the magazines can obtain an introduction to the way material is presented and organized. The criteria for the analysis include the types of articles present in the magazines. In addition, analyzing the sources of evidence used to support the claims can provide crucial information to the kinds of appeals (i.e. logos, ethos, or pathos) used by the authors writing in the genre of computer writing. Other similar factors such as article length, ads, and the advertisers can also be examined. But the demographic data of the magazines is of utmost importance because it describes the audience and thus, defines the way authors write for their audience.

PC World and PC Week have a circulation of 1,125,000 and 305,443 respectively. The former is published monthly and the latter is printed weekly. Eighty-eight percent of the audience of PC World is male and the remainder is female, with ages ranging from 25 to 54 years. Thirteen percent of both magazines' readers are employed by the computer industry, while 59% of PC World's compared to 13% of PC Week's readers work in some sort of management (SRDS 445).