Upgrade, Buy New or Tweak?

by: Lance Chambers

At some time you will need to buy a new machine but unless you have tried or examined a couple of other possibilities you may be wasting a lot of money for no reason. This series of articles will cover a wide array of tweaks and will also discuss upgrade alternatives to speed up your computer. I strongly suggest that you have a look at these before you deside to buy a new machine. Simple upgrades to hard drives, graphics card, memory (RAM) etc. can turn an old slugish computer into a whole different beast giving you performance better than when you first bought the machine. And it can often do it at low cost - most often far lower than buying a new machine. Graphics cards can very often be a very cheap upgrade and it is rare that you won't upgrade your card at least once or twice during the life of your machine. RAM is another example of these cheap but highly effective upgrades. Upgrading the CPU is another very effective upgrade to your machine - assuming you're not already at the top of your motherboards capabilities. When it comes to tweaking your machine there are a wide array of possibilities and this set of articles will address these as it moves on. Using tweaks it's not possible to improve the performance of your machine to the level of a new machine but it is certainly possible to enhance performance at zero cost (other than your time). The tools and techniques discussed as we go on will ensure your machine runs at peak efficiency and ensure that your computing experiences are less tedious and trying (which they can quickly become if you have a slow machine). Everything we will discuss is designed to make your computer run faster and start-up in less time (slow start-ups can be very frustrating - the 'go and make a cuppa coffee' kind just make you want to drop kick your computer out of the top floor of the Empire State Building). Unless you need to run application that require the very latest in hardware our tips can help you extend the life of your machine by a few years at least. Note: If you mostly use you machine for word processing or surfing the net you probably don't need most of the ideas presented in this series. But if you do find your machine is too slow you probably can benefit greatly.

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