Upgrade computer now or later?

Posted by Darrell Hyatt on June 15, 2009

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 6:22 — 2.9MB)

Hello and welcome to the enabling abilities to appear podcast over the next month or so I’m going to be talking about something that is important to all of us as computer users at one time or another, answering that question of when is it time to upgrade my computer or my software.

This is a question that we all face at some time or another and recently it’s come to my attention because several of my clients have either had issues with their computer hardware or are finding their existing computer hardware is not fast enough or adequate enough for their needs and is becoming more of a problem than a solution.

Once you decide that it may be time to upgrade your hardware there are several key questions that come into play, and I’m going to start with some of the basic ones here. As the series goes on and I will look at other questions and put the whole picture together for you to assist you in not only deciding if now is the right time to upgrade but also what should I be looking at to make sure that the next system I get will meet my current needs as well is my future needs.

When deciding what to do about your computer hardware needs some of the important issues to look at are items such as what type of computer processing do I need for example is a dual core processor enough, or do I need to move to the new quad core meanings four processor chips system rather than my existing system. If you computer is up to three years old you most likely have a dual core processor meaning two processing cores in one.

One of the other issues to look at is how much RAM do I need in my new computer. Ram memory is the working storage for your computer this is where all your running programs are stored while you’re using them.  The more memory you have the better, it means you can have multiple programs running at one time with a minimum amount of conflicts here again having a dual core processor or quad processor will also help with the amount of programs a user can have running at one time without noticing any slowdown in performance

A major key question to answer here as well is what size hard drive do I need for storing of my programs as well is my data and information which I create. If you are running a business, or if you do a lot of photography or video work you may want a larger hard drive.  Today when you purchase new computers they generally come with hard drives ranging anywhere from 320 GB on up to 750 GB perhaps even 1TB. My recommendation is the larger the hard drive the better.

If you have any comments, concerns or questions please in e-mail me at darrellh@enablingabilities.com.  Please feel free to visit my website which is www.enablingabilities.com.  Thank you very much