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 the moving parts do wear our after while, like the hard drive and CD-ROM, but mostly because you have installed a lot of software on your computer, and most newer software is designed for faster, newer machines. It just runs slower on older machines. 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 98 and you have upgraded to Windows XP. At one time, 32 or 64 Megabytes of RAM memory was a lot, more than enough for Win 98. But XP requires much more to run well. A PC with 128 Megabytes will use over 100 Meg just for the operating system alone. This does not leave much for your programs, like MS Word, or Internet Explorer to operate in. For reasonable performance, Windows XP should have 256 Meg of RAM, or even 512 or more for best performance.     Cost: 256 Meg of DDR (new) Ram: $80.00          512 Meg: $120.00     installations included. (Note: Memory Pricing is very volatile, changing from day to day. These prices may change at time of delivery) 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 120 Gig, 160 Gig or over 200 Gig drives. If your drive is under 10 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: 120 Gig drive: $115.00         160 Gig Drive: $150     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: CD-RW: $50.00     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 But 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, $30 for us to do it