Life evolves, your computer should too...

Over the lifecycle of an average computer, you will go through many changes. You will constantly add more data to your system, but most will also add new applications and tasks to their workflows as job responsibilities and family responsibilities change. Depending on your foresight when purchasing your computer, the system you bought a few years ago may not be meeting your needs today. When it comes to most computers, you have a multitude of options to increase the capabilities of the system you already own, to tackle these new responsibilities.

Heavy multitasking? Add another monitor! This is a cost effective method of increasing the speed of your workflows, by eliminating the time spent minimizing/switching windows. Monitors can be added to most desktops, many all-in-one computers, and most laptops as well. Once you go multi-monitor, you don’t go back!

Storage. Changing the storage component of your system can both add capacity for more data, as well as increase the speed of your system. Solid state drives are the defining feature of modern systems, yet even some new computers lack them. Decrease your boot time, open applications in a snap, and reduce the chance of data loss when moving your laptop.

RAM. Memory can improve the performance of your system, however there are limits. Many computers come with only a single stick of RAM, which can slow down your system since most consumer systems run faster with “dual channel” memory configurations. To run in dual channel, you require at least 2 sticks of RAM. This can increase the performance of your system by 10+% alone! Beyond that, having additional RAM prevents your system from reading and writing as much data to your hard drive, but that only happens if you don’t have enough RAM in the first place. For most users, 8GB is tolerable, 16GB is ideal, and 32GB is overkill, but this varies wildly based on the applications, and number of tasks you run simultaneously.

Lastly, there’s a possibility that your system can’t be upgraded. This is common in the case of Microsoft Surface, and Apple Mac systems. Macbooks are notorious for integrating every component into a single board, so you can’t upgrade, or even replace faulty components such as storage or memory. Instead, the entire board must be replaced, at a cost that typically leads most users to replace the computer instead. Microsoft’s surface pro computers are glued together, making opening the system for component replacement extremely dangerous, with a high likelihood of breaking the screen.

Reach out to Aces IT Support to discuss your upgrade options, and when purchasing new equipment to ensure your purchase will handle not only your needs today, but also in the future.