Speed Up Your PC

We all have sooooo much going on in our lives that it is simply impossible for us to "please wait" as older versions of Windows will certainly suggest that we do on a fairly regular basis. Why should we though? We spend our hard earned monkey money on these "super" computers and they should do super things at super speeds. Besides no one wants to wait after having to work all day or when we just don't have the time.
Most of us have the need for speed, but don't know where to begin to get there and stay there. Here are a few things to do to stay fast in the computer world.

1. Future Proof Your Purchase - Buying just what you need in a computer to handle the tasks, workload, and software of today is great, but to stay fast now AND later you should buy something that is a step above what you need. This will allow your system to handle to growth of the internet, third party programs, and the installed operating system without you having to do costly upgrades so soon. They will need to be done to stretch out your pc's lifespan, but time is always money and you can save some for a little while longer if you take heed to this step.
2. Maintain the System - Just like anything else that we use in life computers accumulate junk, trash, old files and programs over a period of time. Every now and then (every 6-8 months) a system tune-up needs to be performed. A good tune-up service will defragment the computer's file system, remove junk files and temporary files, remove unnecessary start up programs, and make performance tweaks and adjustments to the operating system also. This is also a good time to make sure that your computer has all of the latest updates for all of its software.
3. RAM it Up - Adding more RAM (Random Access Memory) or Memory as most people refer to it is similar to short term memory for the computer. The more of it you have the more things your computer can do at once without having to slow down to do them all at the same time. If you're having any difficulty multitasking or web pages or programs are loading up very slowly then this may be the ticket for you. This is a relatively quick upgrade that can be done in most repair shops within an hour or two and shouldn't break the bank either.
4. Add Standalone Graphics Card - Most computers come with integrated graphics cards today mainly because most of what we use them for isn't very labor intensive from a graphical standpoint. The performance issue with this is that integrated video cards SHARE your RAM with the rest of the entire system. For example... If your computer has 256MB total RAM and 56MB of that is shared with your integrated graphics card then you only have 200MB to run the rest of the computer. This is a really big deal on older systems because they may have already been upgraded to the maximum the system will take in RAM and adding a stand alone video card will free up the remainder of the system memory.

These are just a few things we all can do to make our computer experiences fast and stay fast. Any and ALL of the services mentioned above are offered here at Dot-computer. Please contact us for more information regarding upgrades by visiting our 'Contact' page.

Lionel Jackson
IT Professional 7 years
Sales Consultant 7 years