The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Upgrading It's no secret in the computer world that games are one of the main driving forces behind the need for the constantly increasing speeds which computers are running at. If you need a computer to surf the Internet, type out letters, and send e-mail on, you have no reason for upgrading a basic machine. As long as it meets your needs, your computer will serve you as long as you want to keep it. If you play games, which are continuously becoming more realistic, or if you want to handle digital photos or movies, you have a need for an increasingly more powerful machine. Fortunately, many people are learning that computer towers are not mysterious black boxes which should never be opened. Many machines can be upgraded quite easily, and doing this yourself, only replacing the pieces you need, will save you a lot of money compared to buying a new computer. So what are some of the main pieces you should be looking at upgrading when it's time? CPU, or computer chip The central processing unit, or chip, is the brain of the computer. Intel Pentium and AMD chips are the main competitors currently on the market, but others are available if you shop around and know what you will need your machine to be able to do. Changing the chip on your machine will have the most drastic effect on your computer's performance. Unfortunately, it will also cost you the most. Chips are falling in price, but still expect to pay over $450 for a powerful enough chip to handle gaming, photo, or video editing. Video Card Video cards have increasingly come to the front of the market as most new games now require a video card with more computing power than entire machines had several years ago. New cards can have up to 256 mbs. of onboard memory. I would not recommend anything less then 128 mbs. of memory if you are currently upgrading. Make sure you shop around. Two cards may look similar, but their performance can be drastically different. RAM memory It used to be quite common for machines to have 32 or 64 mbs. of memory, but over the last two or three years, memory prices have fallen dramatically. Most computers are now coming with 256 mbs. of memory, but even this amount is reaching its limit. At the low price that memory is, if you are going to upgrade, it is worth spending money on additional memory. The more memory your machine has, the faster it will start up and be ready to use, the more programs you can use at any one time, and the easier your machine will handle large files without choking. Optical Drives DVD burners are the next big thing. I have a DVD player on my laptop so my kids can watch movies in the van on long trips, but I'm really not sure why you would want one on your desktop machine. A DVD burner to edit and burn your home movies on I can understand. But for $150 I can buy a decent DVD player and hook it up to my TV and watch movies from the comfort of my couch. DVD players will however reach a saturation point in several years because more games will be released on DVD because they can hold a larger amount of information than a CD. Upgrading your machine is much easier than it is often made out to be. Many of the parts just clip in or are easily connected using only a few wires. When you are thinking of upgrading, do your research, check out web sites like www.pcmech.com, a full resource that can lead you through, step-by-step. ([email protected])
