If you’ve ever owned a computer, you’ve been through it before: your once-mighty machine stutters to life, barely managing to run the programs you need it to. Computers, like anything else, have a “best before” date after which they either begin to slow down, or simply can no longer handle the most cutting-edge software. Here are six signs that it is time to bid a fond farewell to the old clunker draining electricity in your office, and invest in a new computer that will meet your needs:
1. Slow Start-Up
Remember the day you first got your computer? That sleek machine in the big box, the one you had perhaps been holding out on for months to buy? Remember that smell of new computer that wafted out of the box when you opened it, like that distinctive new car smell? You set it up, plugged it in, and pushed the power button, and sure enough, it had a sound like a Star Trek computer and started up almost instantaneously, allowing you to explore your new technology in minutes. It was up and ready in the blink of an eye, like a kid bouncing out of bed on summer vacation. When you start it now, does it bounce out of bed? Or does it grumble and groan like an octogenarian on a rainy day? The speed of your start-up can be an excellent sign in deciding to dump the old machine. If you push the power button, and then go make a sandwich while you’re waiting for the start-up to finish, it might be time to let it go. And you miss that new computer smell, don’t you?
2. Skipping in Online Movies or Music
The internet is a veritable cornucopia of media these days, with streaming video and music readily available at a mouse click. Soon, cable boxes (and cable companies along with them) may be a thing of the past, as more users log on to the web to watch their favorite shows, rent movies, and listen to their favorite hits from the most current band. With dial-up almost completely obsolete, digital internet has made watching video and listening to music a smooth, high-quality activity.
If your streaming music skips and bounces like a broken record player, it could be that your system is simply too slow to handle it. Digital internet is a great thing, but it can also only be as good as the machine that is connected to it. If you have high-class digital internet from a respected provider, but songs and movies are still running slow, then you probably need a new computer. Don’t let the wealth of entertainment on the internet go to waste!
3. Choppy Gameplay Performance
Are you a gamer? Want to play the newest first-person shooter with your friends and co-workers? While your friends are running around at will, racking up experience points and decimating their enemies in combat, are you mostly running face first into a wall while the game chops out around you? Choppy graphics and video are another sign that the end of your computer’s usefulness is near. More than likely, your DVD- or CD-ROM drive is perfectly well equipped to handle any disk you put in it… But your computer’s ability to handle the data on that disc it is another question entirely!
4. Memory Upgrades Won’t Cut It
How many upgrades have you stuffed into that thing already, and… Are they doing anything? One of the quickest, most simple upgrades for speed is a memory upgrade, and maybe you’ve already done that. Your old computer might have come with 128 megabytes of memory installed, and maybe a few years later you went ahead and replaced it with 1 gigabyte, and at the time, the thing ran like new again. But new computers are being sold with around 3 or 4 gigabytes of memory out of the box these days, and with the demands of modern programs and graphics, they need every last byte they can get. If you’ve maxed out the memory upgrades of your machine and still can’t live up to the memory requirements of new software, it’s definitely time for a new machine.
5. Your Accessories Need Replacing
Do you need a new monitor, a new hard drive, and a new printer? If you have a lot of peripherals that need to be replaced on your current machine, it might be more cost effective to buy a whole new package. Sure, you might have paid $1500 for your machine back in the day, but you can get something much faster for much cheaper than that now. Think about the cost of upgrades versus the cost of a new machine; you might be surprised!
6. Your CPU is Outdated
Last, but not least, ask yourself what kind of CPU you’re running. The CPU – the central processing unit – is the brain of the machine, and if the brain isn’t working, neither will the rest of it. The processor is a massive and complicated upgrade, which will more than likely require a new motherboard as well. If your processor is more than a few years old, you’ll find that there are hundreds of processors on the market that will run exponentially faster than yours. If your CPU is running too slow for modern software, or your computer is running too slow in general, then it’s time to look into buying a new system.