I’ve decided to start a short series of posts on personal tech support advice. In a way, I’ve already touched on some of these subjects. Over the next few posts, I will address the areas of concern for most home computer users, and what you need to do to stay on top of the issues. Follow closely, and you can fire your tech support guy, or at least know how to discuss your service options intelligently.
The first thing that usually comes up in discussions of tech support nature is wether or not it is a good idea to updgrade or replace. Usually there are only two hardware upgrades that you can make that will significantly improve your computer’s performance. One is to replace the CPU, and the other is to add more RAM.
On both of these issues, the very first thing to do is to identify what you have in your system now. This can be done during boot-up, or from within the control panel. Once you’ve identified your system configuration, you need to look up the technical manual for the computer in question on the manufacturer’s website. If you have a third-party clone type system, you will need to look up the motherboard manufacturer. The point in looking up these people is to verify what the maximum support your system has for the two components in question: CPU and RAM.
The bottom line is this: if you are going to spend more than $100 on upgrades, and you are not going to double either your CPU speed or the amount of RAM in your system, it’s probably not worth it. Prices fluctuate a bit, but you get the idea. If you can go buy a new desktop system for $300 to $400, why spend more than $100 to upgrade? Why upgrade at all if it’s not going to make a significant difference in your system performance?
Next time we’ll take a look at operating systems, and which ones I would recommend, and why.