When is it time to move on?
Discussion
My PC, which runs my small business is about 2 years old; a fairly high Spec HP when I bought it. Stll has enough capacity for my use. It has been very reliable and over the years has acquired lots of add ons, especially specialist software (some of which I bought and downloaded off the web and I don't think I can get again without paying) . I don't relish the task of moving to the next machine because of this.
Thing is, I would rather have a planned transition to the next macine than wait for the morning when it goes T1ts up and leaves me in the lurch. What signs are there that things are due for renewal? At the moment it is a bit slow at start up ( I think due to the varios firewalls, virus checkers back ups and 'restore'functions at start up), sometimes is slow to shut down and once in a while won't shut down or throws me an error at start up which a reboot solves. I run systemworks which tends to tidy up these little foibles. I back up to an external hard drive frequently.
I intend to go wireless when we upgrade and have the bits and bobs ready for that. I was thinking of buying the new PC now, ready for when it dies but last time I did that it sat in a abox for 12 months and was looking out dated by the time I used it.
The other idea I had was to run two machines side by side, put email and all new work onto the new machine, connect them together or work from a shared external hard drive for a while then move to the new machine completely as the old one got less use. I know this isn't a techies response, but I need a comfort blanket!
What would you do?
It doesn't sound like you are either out of capacity or it is terminally slow.
I would re-install the operating system, starting from scratch following a format. I would then ditch systemworks in favour of AVG, Spybot, Adaware and Zone Alarm. Prevent any un-necessary applications running in the taskbar and on startup using msconfig.
How much RAM do you have? Personally, I wouldn't upgrade until you need to. The chances are that after a fresh install your PC will be plenty capable enough. If nothing has died yet, it's not really any more likely that components will fail now.
My PC is now 4 years old, P4 2.26, 1GB RAM, 240GB hard disks, 19" TFT etc. Until Windows Vista is released and most of the bugs ironed out, I probably won't upgrade. That will be about September next year.
I would re-install the operating system, starting from scratch following a format. I would then ditch systemworks in favour of AVG, Spybot, Adaware and Zone Alarm. Prevent any un-necessary applications running in the taskbar and on startup using msconfig.
How much RAM do you have? Personally, I wouldn't upgrade until you need to. The chances are that after a fresh install your PC will be plenty capable enough. If nothing has died yet, it's not really any more likely that components will fail now.
My PC is now 4 years old, P4 2.26, 1GB RAM, 240GB hard disks, 19" TFT etc. Until Windows Vista is released and most of the bugs ironed out, I probably won't upgrade. That will be about September next year.
Muncher said:
It doesn't sound like you are either out of capacity or it is terminally slow.
I would re-install the operating system, starting from scratch following a format. I would then ditch systemworks in favour of AVG, Spybot, Adaware and Zone Alarm. Prevent any un-necessary applications running in the taskbar and on startup using msconfig.
How much RAM do you have? Personally, I wouldn't upgrade until you need to. The chances are that after a fresh install your PC will be plenty capable enough. If nothing has died yet, it's not really any more likely that components will fail now.
My PC is now 4 years old, P4 2.26, 1GB RAM, 240GB hard disks, 19" TFT etc. Until Windows Vista is released and most of the bugs ironed out, I probably won't upgrade. That will be about September next year.
I would re-install the operating system, starting from scratch following a format. I would then ditch systemworks in favour of AVG, Spybot, Adaware and Zone Alarm. Prevent any un-necessary applications running in the taskbar and on startup using msconfig.
How much RAM do you have? Personally, I wouldn't upgrade until you need to. The chances are that after a fresh install your PC will be plenty capable enough. If nothing has died yet, it's not really any more likely that components will fail now.
My PC is now 4 years old, P4 2.26, 1GB RAM, 240GB hard disks, 19" TFT etc. Until Windows Vista is released and most of the bugs ironed out, I probably won't upgrade. That will be about September next year.
Athlon I think, 256, 2.ghz and 80Gb HDD
Normal lifespan of a working PC is more like 4 years, within this timeframe you're just as likley to experience component faliure on a new PC as an old one. The hardware reliability tends to obey a 'bathtub curve'.
Software is another matter, if you're constantly adding new software to the system then its reliability will decrease. If its working fine now then the best thing to do might be to use a second machine for surfing and email, keep this one as-is. If it aint broke dont break it.
No guarentees of course but thats life
Edit: You do take backups don't you?
Software is another matter, if you're constantly adding new software to the system then its reliability will decrease. If its working fine now then the best thing to do might be to use a second machine for surfing and email, keep this one as-is. If it aint broke dont break it.
No guarentees of course but thats life
Edit: You do take backups don't you?
Edited by aldi on Wednesday 28th June 22:43
Leftie said:
My PC, which runs my small business is about 2 years old; a fairly high Spec HP when I bought it. Stll has enough capacity for my use. It has been very reliable and over the years has acquired lots of add ons, especially specialist software (some of which I bought and downloaded off the web and I don't think I can get again without paying) . I don't relish the task of moving to the next machine because of this.
Thing is, I would rather have a planned transition to the next macine than wait for the morning when it goes T1ts up and leaves me in the lurch. What signs are there that things are due for renewal? At the moment it is a bit slow at start up ( I think due to the varios firewalls, virus checkers back ups and 'restore'functions at start up), sometimes is slow to shut down and once in a while won't shut down or throws me an error at start up which a reboot solves. I run systemworks which tends to tidy up these little foibles. I back up to an external hard drive frequently.
I intend to go wireless when we upgrade and have the bits and bobs ready for that. I was thinking of buying the new PC now, ready for when it dies but last time I did that it sat in a abox for 12 months and was looking out dated by the time I used it.
The other idea I had was to run two machines side by side, put email and all new work onto the new machine, connect them together or work from a shared external hard drive for a while then move to the new machine completely as the old one got less use. I know this isn't a techies response, but I need a comfort blanket!
What would you do?
This IS a pragmatic techies response that has a small business.
B
m8 is going thru the hassles of avg not detecting lots and lots of viri, he trial nod32, it works.....
AVG is free and does not work, check out outpost/agnitum firewall, it has free and pro
u want 1000mhz cpu, 1-2 gb ram, 100gb hard drive, 128 mb agp card and it should work fine for all games 2-4 years old
AVG is free and does not work, check out outpost/agnitum firewall, it has free and pro
u want 1000mhz cpu, 1-2 gb ram, 100gb hard drive, 128 mb agp card and it should work fine for all games 2-4 years old
CPU and graphics card are bottom of the upgrade list for most business apps, they are rarely the location of the bottleneck.
256MB memory is most definitely not enough however. Be careful when buying extra memory, you may well not be able to use 1GB sticks, 256MB or 512MB may be the limit (check in your manual - if you dont have one then look on the manufacturer's web site). 1GB total is plenty, 2GB is usually overkill (and not supported on all machines).
Whilst "residue" does slow down booting, closing and general use, my money is on Norton Internet/Antivirus getting in the way . It takes my dual core 2GB machine over 30 seconds longer to boot and to shutdown when Norton is installed. Unfortunately, it does seem to do a good job (as you can see, antivirus choice is almost a religious matter).
I would get a new hard drive and install Windows on that. Then use your existing drive as a slave. Chances are that you can simply create a link to the relevant executable on your old drive, thus removing the need to totally reinstall it again. Of course, some programs need registry entries and so on, but many do not. If all else fails, you can swap your old drive back in and boot to the old OS. A variation on this method is to install the new drive as slave and do a clean installation in there. That should give you the boot menu with the option of booting into the old or new OS.
The third option is to buy an external hard drive and copy the entire contents of your existing drive onto there. By the way, there is no point getting a 100GB hard drive with 320GB units now hovering around the £60 mark.
256MB memory is most definitely not enough however. Be careful when buying extra memory, you may well not be able to use 1GB sticks, 256MB or 512MB may be the limit (check in your manual - if you dont have one then look on the manufacturer's web site). 1GB total is plenty, 2GB is usually overkill (and not supported on all machines).
Whilst "residue" does slow down booting, closing and general use, my money is on Norton Internet/Antivirus getting in the way . It takes my dual core 2GB machine over 30 seconds longer to boot and to shutdown when Norton is installed. Unfortunately, it does seem to do a good job (as you can see, antivirus choice is almost a religious matter).
I would get a new hard drive and install Windows on that. Then use your existing drive as a slave. Chances are that you can simply create a link to the relevant executable on your old drive, thus removing the need to totally reinstall it again. Of course, some programs need registry entries and so on, but many do not. If all else fails, you can swap your old drive back in and boot to the old OS. A variation on this method is to install the new drive as slave and do a clean installation in there. That should give you the boot menu with the option of booting into the old or new OS.
The third option is to buy an external hard drive and copy the entire contents of your existing drive onto there. By the way, there is no point getting a 100GB hard drive with 320GB units now hovering around the £60 mark.
Zad said:
256MB memory is most definitely not enough however. Be careful when buying extra memory, you may well not be able to use 1GB sticks, 256MB or 512MB may be the limit (check in your manual - if you dont have one then look on the manufacturer's web site). 1GB total is plenty, 2GB is usually overkill (and not supported on all machines).
Crucial have a nice little tool here which will tell you what you can do on your motherboard.
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