Perhaps the most straightforward way to assess the need for a new PC comes from trying some of the speedup suggestions presented in this book. If you earnestly attempt to speed up your PC by removing unnecessary programs, adding more memory and disk storage, reconfiguring key system settings, tweaking the Windows Registry, and so on, yet still have sluggish performance, your only option may be to purchase a new computer. In other words, when all else fails, replace the old PC with a new one.

You don’t have to try every speedup in this book to conclude that a new PC is the way to go. After all, not every user is comfortable editing the Windows Registry or upgrading internal components. So if you’ve tried everything that’s within your level of expertise and your system is still slow, you should consider buying a new system—rather than fumbling your way through technical upgrades to your old one.

Tip

Time is money—especially your personal time. You can spend a lot of time trying to tweak your PC’s performance, but that time might be better spent doing other things. So you should factor your time into the cost equation when contemplating a new PC. It’s often a lot quicker to purchase and install a new PC than it is to try to speed up an old one.

Whereas it costs nothing to change a few configuration settings and wipe unnecessary programs off your hard disk (and out of system memory), other upgrades do cost money. Add up the cost of more memory, a bigger hard disk, a new graphics card, and the like, and you may soon be approaching the cost of a new low-end PC—which will probably outperform your old PC, even if upgraded. Add up the costs of potential upgrades (and the time involved to make them) and compare that to the cost of a new PC. It may be more cost-efficient—and time-efficient—to go the new PC route from the get go.

Not all PCs can be upgraded. Specifically, there’s a limited amount of upgrading you can do to notebook PCs. Yes, you can upgrade the memory and add an external hard drive; you can also reconfigure any number of system settings, of course. But if what you really need is a faster CPU or more powerful graphics card, you just can’t do it like you can with a desktop model. For many users, buying a new notebook is the only way to achieve appreciable gains in performance.

Remember that “three years and out” rule we discussed in Chapter 9, “Preparing for a Computer Upgrade”? The gist of it is that if your PC is more than three years old, it probably doesn’t have the basic oomph necessary to accept upgraded components. As I said then, I might stretch that by a year or two, but if your PC is more than five years old (or running any version of Windows prior to Windows XP), I certainly can’t recommend spending a lot of time or money in trying to speed it up. Yes, try the simple stuff, but if the system is still slow (and it likely will be), it’s time to give it up and buy a new one. An old PC is only going to be so fast; nothing you can do will make it perform like a brand-new model.

If you take a lot of home movies that you want to edit on your PC, you probably don’t want to do it on an older system. Video-editing programs, such as Adobe Premiere and Pinnacle Studio, are extremely demanding, especially when you get to the part where you “produce” (actually encode) the final video file.

Put simply, video encoding is one of the most demanding tasks that you can ask a PC to perform. It takes a powerful CPU to process the data quickly; processing a long movie can take an hour or more on a slow PC. In addition, the large file sizes tax both system memory and hard disk storage. If you’re serious about video editing, tweaking an older PC probably won’t get you to where you want to go. To get the job done, you’ll probably need to upgrade to a much more powerful system.

Although photo editing isn’t near as CPU intensive as video editing, it still takes a bit of horsepower to handle and render the large files produced by today’s multi-megapixel digital cameras. Just trying to display a screen full of thumbnails in Adobe Photoshop can max out an underpowered system; you need a decent CPU, a lot of memory, and tons of hard disk space if you want to accomplish your tasks in a reasonable amount of time.

Alas, most older PCs are just plain pokey when you put them to the task. It’s not quite as bad if you’re working with smaller files (fewer megapixels) and not adding a lot of special effects. But when you’re displaying and processing the large files common with the latest digital cameras, a new system may be the only way to achieve the performance you need.

You may think PC games are frivolous, but in reality they’re the most taxing thing you can do on your computer. It’s true; all those fancy graphics and gee-whiz sound effects definitely put your computer system through its paces.

In fact, to get the best game play possible, you need a truly state-of-the-art computer system. If your computer is an older one, it simply won’t have the processing and graphics horsepower necessary to play the latest games quite as fast or as smoothly as you might have expected. In fact, it may not run some of the more demanding games at all. The reality is that while you can upgrade an older system to run most of today’s PC games, the cost of doing so may be prohibitive. After all, we’re talking serious upgrades—CPUs and graphics cards and maybe even audio cards and monitors. That’s a lot of upgrading; it might be simpler (and not much more expensive) to purchase a new system optimized for game play.

You don’t have to purchase new applications to obsolete your current PC. Sometimes just upgrading to a new version of an existing application will do the job. That’s because software publishers often add a lot of new features when they upgrade their programs, and these new features may require more computing power. This is probably most apparent with already demanding applications, such as photo and video editing, but it can happen with other types of applications, as well. If you upgrade your favorite app and find that your PC either won’t run it or runs it slowly, it may be time to consider upgrading to a new PC, as well.

Along the same lines, simply running more applications than you used to can also make your current PC too sluggish to bother with. We’re talking multitasking—running multiple applications at the same time. To do this well, your system needs a powerful CPU and lots of RAM. Adding RAM is easy enough, but it might not be feasible to upgrade your system’s CPU. So you may need to purchase a new PC if you start multitasking—or settle for really sluggish performance.

Finally, if you want to upgrade from Windows XP to Windows Vista, your old PC may not be up to the task. Vista requires more processing power, more system memory, more hard disk space, and a much more powerful graphics card. You can’t just tweak an old PC to make it Vista ready. For many users, the only way to upgrade to Vista is to buy a new PC built with Vista in mind (and with Vista already installed, of course).

Sluggish performance may be the least of your PC problems. What do you do if your PC is constantly freezing or crashing, or just stops working altogether?

Old PCs, just like people, sometimes slow down and die. If you think your PC is on its way to becoming a “late” PC, no amount of tweaking and upgrading will help the cause. It’s time to start shopping for a new model—now.

Notebook PCs are all the rage. In fact, if you visit your local computer or consumer electronics store, you’ll find a lot more notebook PCs than desktop models for sale.

There’s good reason for that. Notebook PCs offer similar power in a smaller package than desktop PCs, and often for no price premium. Unlike desktop models, a notebook PC can be taken with you when you travel, or if you just want to check your email while sipping a latte at Starbucks. You can take your notebook from room to room in your home or office, or even use it in the family room or bedroom. It’s versatile, truly personal computing—which is why they’re the most popular models sold today.

So even though you might have a fully functional desktop PC, the desire for a portable notebook model might inspire you to dump your old machine for a new one before it become obsolete.

As noted previously, notebook PCs are not easily upgradable—especially when what you want to upgrade is the form factor. You may love your current notebook, but if you want one that’s smaller or lighter or has a longer battery life, there’s no way to upgrade it to make it so. If a different type or better performing notebook is what you want, you have to buy a new one—even if your old one is still running fine.

Let’s face it. Sometimes you just get tired of what you have and want something new. That happens with cars and TVs and houses, and it happens with personal computers, too. If you’re tired of your old PC, that may be reason enough to buy a new one. That might sound wasteful to some, but if it’s what you want, go for it.