Upgrading your computer or laptop, on the cheap.
So, your computer or laptop is running a bit slow, or you think its either time to upgrade or buy a new computer/laptop. What is the best decision for you? Whether you have an apple computer, mac laptop, or a pc, upgrading typically has the best cost vs. benefit ratio.
As always, it depends and well, doesn’t depend on a few things. Can you afford a new computer? How old is your current computer? Well, Chicago’s CompuTechs+ will tell you why these questions don’t really matter. Unless your computer is old (lets say, more than 7-8 years old), it should still be worth quite a bit of money. Regardless if you want a new computer, or simply want to repair the old laptop or computer, a decent used computer or laptop will sell for at least $200 or so if everything is in working order. Apple computers and mac laptops always hold their value longer – And that can affect your buying decisions.
The reason to upgrade is simple: RAM (computer memory) and computer or laptop hard drives are cheap. Typical RAM prices are $20-45 per gigabyte (GB), and hard drive prices are about $0.37/GB (laptop hard drives, or 2.5″ hard drives) to $0.14/GB (desktop hard drives, or 3.5″ hard drives) — Equivalent to $59.99 for a 160GB 2.5″ SATA laptop hard drive and $69.99 for a 500GB 3.5″ SATA computer hard drive. These prices are universal for Apple computers or Apple laptops as well.
What this means for you: For (typically) less than $100 or so, you can upgrade your computer with a larger, faster hard drive (with a 3-5 year warranty, meaning more reliability and security for your computer data), as well as increase the computer RAM (computer memory), which means you will be able to have more programs open at once without slowing the computer down. This not only extends the life of your machine, it also increases it’s value once it’s time to finally purchase a new computer or laptop.
Basically, we recommend upgrading for a few reasons…
- Extends the life of your computer or laptop
- Increases the value of your computer (for resale) – But usually only 50% of the cost of the parts will increase that value
- A newly reinstalled computer OS (Operating System) = all of your old data still remains on the original hard drive (providing privacy and security)
- Increase the speed of your computer or laptop on a budget
- Increase the capacity of your computer or laptop on a budget
Our next blog will include instuctions and information on how to securely and properly wipe the data off of a hard drive (if you ever plan on selling your computer or laptop). Formatting doesn’t erase data (it just flags the data as ‘ok’ to delete, and it remains intact on your hard drive. Our method wipes over your computer data multiple times substituting random 1′s and 0′s, rendering data recovery almost useless using any method — And it deletes each and every file on the drive, and takes an average of 8 hours to complete on a machine with ‘decent’ computing speed.
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