What a Best-Seller Ranking Tells You, and What It Does Not

Popularity is evidence of something real. A configuration that sells steadily has been assembled many times over, which means its parts are known to co-operate, spares sit on the shelf and the people supporting it have seen its quirks before. That is worth having, and it is not the same thing as being right for you.

What a ranking cannot know is your monitor's resolution and refresh rate, the games or applications you actually run, how many years the machine has to last and how much noise you will put up with. Those four answers narrow a list far faster than the ordering does.