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Friday, April 27, 2007
Save your money when it comes to these upgrades
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
When I lived in Oregon my friend Jim was on a “hot shot” forest fire team. These hot shots parachuted into remote areas and did their best to put out a fire or contain it until land-based crews could reach the scene.
One hot summer day Jim and his crew were working to build a fire line. They were almost out of water and radioed for more supplies. Finally the supply chopper arrived and everyone raced toward the package - only to find luke warm chocolate milk but no water.
What does this have to do with computers? Well, in the computer world you may buy something expecting it to be the perfect fix or upgrade, only to find out it’s the equivalent of warm chocolate milk. You can drink it to quench a thirst, but it’s not very satisfying. Knowing when that might be the case can prevent disappointment and save you money. Today we’ll look at some risk areas:
RAM memory
Especially with the arrival of Windows Vista, you’ll see the benefit of having up to 2 gigabytes of RAM. But if you still have XP, 1 gigabyte does nicely for most uses. While adding more RAM than this may speed up a computer slightly, you run into the law of diminishing returns. In most cases, adding still more RAM is a waste of money.
Hard disks
My 200 gigabyte hard disk has about 115 gigabytes free. Replacing that disk with a larger one would offer no benefit at all. If your disk is less than halfway full, there’s no point in replacing it. Instead, if you have the cash on hand, consider adding a second external hard disk. That will give you room to grow as well as providing a handy way to store back-up copies of your data.
Computer monitors
I love the way flat panel LCD monitors look. They take up less space on the desk than a tube monitor, and prices have come way down. But if you have the wrong expectations, they can be a waste of money.
Sure, there’s plenty to recommend about them these days - for one thing, the response time is vastly improved from the first generation of these monitors. In the early days LCD had trouble handling fast action, like video or video games.
But if you have a top notch tube-type monitor, don’t expect even the best LCD monitors to offer better color or sharper images. Replace your monitor if you want a more modern look, or think a wide screen flat panel would make life easier. Otherwise, avoid the expense and disappointment.
Routers
America has always been fascinated by speed. Me too. I still remember the way the early Pontiac GTOs pushed you back in your seat when you pressed hard on the accelerator. To take advantage of this craving, you’ll see all sorts of speed claims on the packaging for both wired and wireless routers. I expect those claims are true. But even the slowest router is faster than your Internet connection. So if you expect to get faster response on the Net based on your router, you are heading for disppointment.
Computer tune-up programs
They promise to fix problems, speed up your computer - if you believe the ads they’ll do almost everything but cook scrambled eggs for breakfast.
I’ve found these programs to only do a so-so job of fixing problems. And they seem so eager to find and report problems that I suspect they end up fixing things that aren’t really broken at times, dangerous habit.
My advice: Use one when - and only when - a problem is hurting the performance of your computer. Don’t use them on a computer that is working just fine. Ironically, my favorite of these tools is free for the download. You can find Ccleaner here
Unlike some of the commercial products it’s very simple and has no annoying pop-ups.
New PCs
When you spend several hundred, or even several thousand dollars, on a new computer you expect to experience a real difference.
But if you have a relatively modern PC - with a processor rated at 2 gigahertz or higher, XP installed and 1 gigabyte of RAM - replacing it with a new computer with Vista installed isn’t going to be a life changing experience.
That’s especially true if most of your computing involves surfing the Web, using e-mail, writing some documents and doing some spreadsheets. Even a hot new PC using a chip with multiple processors won’t give you much - if any - improvement that you will notice. Sure it’ll be faster but not in ways the average user would notice.
I hope I’ve saved some of you a few bucks today by steering you toward a cool drink of water.
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