Many people have learned through hard and often expensive lessons that your personal computer – not unlike your car – is an asset that requires maintenance. In years gone by – prior to the critical importance of PCs for most of us – most personal computers either didn’t last long enough or weren’t important enough to require maintenance. Therefore, like most other technical assets it lived out its life without impacting your very significantly.
Now that personal computers are certainly important if not critical to our daily lives, you PC has risen in importance to rival your house and car. If you have a computer at home you certainly use it for much more than email and surfing the web. Most people have volumes of critical personal and family financial information, tax returns, payment receipts – indeed even automated payment processes – all of which are literally indispensible. Now enter into this equation the eventual problems that do surface regarding personal computers – viruses, application failure or replacement, and hard drive file fragmentation. Finally, there is the issue of your Windows Registry maintenance that – while typically accomplished with a registry software product – still needs to be done and should be done often. The obvious question at some point then becomes – How do I update an aging PC to regain performance and retain its value?
To put this into perspective, there are several dimensions to this question – Hardware Updates, Software Application Updates, and System (i.e. Windows) Updates. Let’s take these one at a time.
Hardware updates should be those that include newer or replaced peripherals like printers or external drives, where the hardware itself may still be functional but the release level or the drivers may now be dated and irreplaceable. Printers and drives are pretty cheap today so this is not a major investment, and can often lead to increases in your productivity from newer and faster models.
Updates to Application Software should again be limited to replacing older versions – especially those of critical applications – with upgraded versions that are normally not too expensive. While some of these are costly most are not because software companies recognize the wisdom of keeping you as a customer by offering inexpensive upgrades.
Lastly, your Operating System will not normally need to be replace unless your PC is pretty old and you need the compatibility characteristics of newer versions of Windows. This can also be achieved through an upgrade. The Windows Registry Repair is now a relatively simple process that requires only a modest investment in a quality software product designed to fix registry.
The final issue on your list should be a general checkup to insure that all your warranties and backups are working effectively and that your security and virus protection software is current and working well.
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