Should I Update My Computer Components?

Today I'm writing the final article for the year 2011, it will reach you in roughly 2½ to 3 weeks. I thought it might be interesting to talk about updating computer equipment since some people look at the end of the year as a time to review the type of equipment they are using and to see if there is a worthwhile way to make a meaningful upgrade. While I haven't upgraded my computer, I have just upgraded my monitor. You would be surprised at some of the really good sales that are out there on large monitors. All monitors are not the same however and sometimes even the name brands prove disappointing. I was using a Samsung 22 inch monitor that just annoyed the heck out of me. It was almost impossible to try and change the settings manually, and it always seemed like I could never get the colors just right. Another problem was that it was very dull and some things on it were hard to see, especially if there was not a huge color difference between a background and an icon. Even some text did not stand out like it should. As many of you know already, because I have spoken about it in the past, I use a dual monitor setup. My second monitor is a Viore television and monitor and it was better than the Samsung. Now don't get me wrong, usually Samsung is a terrific brand and as a matter of fact, my main television is a Samsung plasma set and it is beautiful, but my monitor left a lot to be desired. I replaced it with a 28 inch Hanns-G monitor. I was familiar with this brand from the past and knew that it had a nice picture, I also knew that if you could get it on sale you can get a terrific bargain. I paid less than $300 for this monster and the picture is as good as any of the high priced monitors that I have ever seen.

Many times you will see advertisements telling you that it is time to update the chips on your motherboard. Just in case you don't know what I am talking about, and if that is the case don't try and update it, the motherboard is the main component inside your computer. That is where everything connects to. A lot of times you will see ads that claim you should update your central processing unit which is your main computer chip, the brain of your machine. There can be problems with this however, and one of those problem may be that the new chip does not fit into the same socket as the old chip did. If that happens you are now left high and dry. I usually do not advocate updating the central processing unit, because by the time the central processing chip goes out of date and a new one is being sold that is vastly superior to the one you have, it is probably time for a new computer. No one wants a computer that has a fast central processing unit and slow peripherals. Most people just go out and buy a whole new unit every few years or so. I prefer to build one if it is economically feasible. I built the one I'm using now, but the one before that was purchased, because at that time it was cheaper to buy one already made that had parts that I wanted, than to try and purchase the parts individually.

Computer Gamer
Photo Source: MorgueFile

Today we are very lucky when it comes to computers. The reason that I say that is that almost any computer will be powerful enough for the average person. While this may not hold true for some professionals, it does hold true for 95% of us. The newest central processing units from the company AMD have graphics built right into them so there is no need for most of us to buy a graphics card. Intel, the other big chip maker, supplies a graphics chip that takes the place of a graphics card. Heavy game players that are into the newest games, are some of the few people that may need a high-powered graphics card, because these games are becoming so graphics demanding that even with a good integrated graphics chip it may not be possible to turn on every graphics option in the game.

One of the things that are being touted as a big improvement are solid state hard drives. These drives have no moving parts and are extremely fast, but with this speed comes a great expense. They are far more expensive than your ordinary hard drive and quite frankly for most of us they are just not worth it. I might feel different about it if they were the same price as traditional hard drives, but I can not see spending the same for a 200 gig solid-state hard drive as you would for a couple of ordinary 1 TB drives. I am still wondering about the dependability of the solid-state hard drive, as I don't know anyone that has ever used one. I know that if it operates the same way as a memory card it will eventually degrade. Right now it just is not a worthwhile purchase.

Sound is another component that is built into our computers, some purists still stand by sound cards. I personally don't think they are needed, but I am sure there are some people out there that would not agree with me and these people might be game players and audiophiles. I have no problem whatsoever with the sound on my computer, but in all honestly I don't play much music on it. I believe that one upgrade that is a great improvement is a wireless keyboard and mouse, just make sure that the one you buy will work with the keyboard on your lap. Sometimes some of these keyboards don't have a very strong signal, read the reviews on line first.

If you have a good printer I don't see the need to upgrade it unless you are going for a printer built into an all in one device, that is also a scanner and perhaps a fax machine. These are extremely handy and this is one upgrade that I highly recommend. I have been using a Canon all-in-one Pixma machine for years now and it hasn't given me one bit of trouble even though I used the cheapest ink cartridges that I can get on the Internet. The only advice I have here is that this type of device requires a special kind of ink cartridge that has a computer chip built into it, thus making it more expensive. To show you the difference in price, I am going to compare what I used to pay for a Canon cartridge without the chip in my old printer and what I pay now. I was buying cartridges at only $.75 each when I got the new all-in-one machine that use the ink cartridges with the chip and the price had gone up to $2.25 each for a cartridge and it is now costing me about $2.75 for each cartridge.

If you need a new computer and are just an average person that does word processing, a little drawing, watches movies and goes on the Internet, you should probably just buy a cheaper computer. One with a dual chip of 2.0 MHz or more will be just fine. I bought the absolute cheapest E-Machine laptop with a duel core AMD C-50 fusion chip that runs at only 1.0 MHz and believe me when I tell you this, I can do all the word processing I want on it, watch any movie and run any program on it I own. As far as the Internet goes, there is absolutely no problem going on the Internet with it. When I bought this machine the salesman did everything he could to talk me out of it, but I was not going to let him since the laptop only cost $229. He landed up getting frustrated and angry. I guess he didn't make any commission on this sale.

Tablet
Photo Source: Ken, About Facts Net

The bottom line is really this, if you have an old machine, don't upgrade it, buy a new one, they are certainly cheap enough now. If you give that old machine to charity, you might even get a write-off on your income tax. Upgrading your central processing unit might not even give you any results that you could notice, so why even bother. You might want to even consider a tablet if you just use your computer for play, the Internet and watching movies.