Sunday, May 11, 2008

Upgrading your computer

Everyone of us might have undergone the feeling that after few months of buying a new computer, we would feel unsatisfied with its performance and so wanna upgrade in a short time after buying a new computer. And the scenario gets more worse if you like to switch to Vista from XP. With Microsoft announcing that it would stop providing support for XP in few months, every PC user is forced to use Vista. But buying a new Vista compatible CPU is too costly and the better option is to upgrade your old PC. So, here are the things you should do for upgrading.

Back up your data : First of all, if you plan for an upgrade back up all your important data onto an DVD or external harddisk.

Choose your hardware : Then, choose your hardware for your requirements such as a tv tuner card if you wish to watch tv in your computer etc. You aren't going to buy things for your computer frequently, so do thorough analysis of your requirements and select the suitable hardware

DVD Drive : If you are upgrading to vista, you need an DVD drive for sure because vista comes in dvd only. So get a good dvd drive for your system. Upto my knowledge, the better dvd writers are liteon, sony and asus.

RAM : Vista needs a mininum of 1GB RAM to perform to a satisfactory level. So a RAM of 1GB or more is required for Vista.

Drivers : When you buy any hardware, do check whether the drivers for the same are available for vista. If you donot have driver for the hardware, the chances of your hardware not working are high.

New BIOS : If you are planning to upgrade your Motherboard, then check out for the Motherboard with latest bios. A crash free bios would be good.

Graphics Card : Are you mad about gaming? Then you really need a good graphics card for the latest games to be played. Choose a latest graphic card with a suitable memory and according to your budget. The power requirements for your graphic card also should be met. So, choose a graphic card that suits your motherboard and power supply. And do go for a graphic card that supports DirectX 10.

IDE to SATA : If you are going to upgrade your harddisk, optical drive etc, then go for SATA drives because they are much faster than IDE.

Software Compatability : Be sure that you have your softwares updated or upgraded to make them work in your new environment. If you donot find any upgrades for your softwares, then run the software in compatibility mode.

USB Upgrade : If you have been using USB 1.1 in your old system, upgrade them to USB 2 as they provide a much more faster data transfer.

Above all, if you plan to run vista in your system, then run the vista upgrade advisor to get a rough idea about the hardware requirements for your PC.



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