PC UPGRADES When you bought your Computer it was the newest and fastest computer ever, right? Then why does it seem so slow now? Partly because moving parts like the hard drive wear out, but mostly because newer software you may have installed is designed for faster, newer machines, and runs slower on older machines. Also, computers get filled up with "junk", programs that keep running in the background that you probably don't need. Just like people that try to do too much at one time, often we have problems. This does NOT mean you have to go out an buy a new computer every year! There are a number of inexpensive upgrades you can to to greatly improve performance. These include: MEMORY The System memory is where the real work is done when you use your computer (see the Computer Basics page for a better explanation) The single best upgrade you can do is to add more memory to your PC. Especially if your machine came with Windows XP and you have upgraded to Windows Vista or Windows 7. At one time, 512 or 1 gig of RAM memory was thought to be a lot. Windows XP ran much better with 2 gig, now conisidered the minimum for Windows 7.     Cost: Prices vary depending on the age of your machine, and market conditions.     Generally speaking, you can upgrade to 2 gigs for less than $100.     Contact us for the latest pricing for your system. HARD DRIVE Your PC's hard drive is where your Operating System and all of your programs are stored. At one time, hard drives were measured in Megabytes, with 500 Meg being large. Now we are in the Gigabyte (1000 Megabyte) ranges, with most PC's coming with 250 Gig, 500 Gig or 1000 Gig (1 Terabyte) drives. If your drive is under 100 Gig, then consider adding a second drive or moving all of your drive contents onto a bigger drive and replacing removing the old one. To give some relative sizes, an average MP3 song file is about 4 Meg, so one gigabyte would hold about 250 songs.     Cost: 500 Gig drive: $75.00         installations included. CD or DVD WRITER Still using just a CD reading drive? Most newer PC's come with a CD writer, also know as CD-RW, for creating CD's. Whether for Data, copying music CD's or MP3 files, the software to create them is included. Add a second drive of you have room, or replace your current CD drive. You can also add a DVD-RW for even greater storage, 4.7 GIG of data, compared to a CD's 700 MEG.     Cost: DVD-RW: $75.00      installations included MOTHERBOARD AND PROCESSOR Your PC's processor and the motherboard it, and all the other stuff that plugs into it, are the real brains of your PC. Newer means faster, and that is always good. Processor speeds are measured in Megahertz or Gigahertz. For exapmple, the original IBM PC, back in the 80's, ran at 12 Megahertz. Two or three years ago, we broke the 1000 Megahertz barrier, and started to call it 1 Gigahertz. Processors now included on low end machines are in the 2 Gig to 3 Gig range. The downside here is that to use a new processor, you will probably need a new motherboard, and new memory, as the older stuff is incompatible. If you need all three parts, you are getting up to about $300.00. So unless you already have a reasonably new hard drive, CDRW and other items, you are probably better off to get a whole new system.     Cost: Motherboard: $120 +.    Processor: $100 +    Memory: $80 + BEST PRACTICES The Very Best Thing you can do to keep your system running well is to keep it clean and secure by removing viruses, spyware, unneeded programs, and by removing anything that runs in the background that you don't need. You can learn all about these things on our Clean and Speed page, the Security page, and Computer Basics pages. Or just bring it in to us, and we can clean it up for you!     Cost: Free if you do it yourself, $50 for us to do it