Upgrade your old PC and make it faster!

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Computers Upgrades:

If you have a computer at the moment that you think is too old or too slow for modern computing applications, then think again! Cheap Computer Guy is here to help you upgrade your PC to suit your needs.

Hardware Upgrades:
It is worth taking a look at Cheap Computer Guys guide to building a computer from parts and guide to selecting computer parts before you upgrade any of your computers hardware.

Installing new software on old computers can sometimes be a problem. Sometimes the software will refuse to install as the computer does not meet the minimum requirements of the software.

Sometimes the software installs, but runs too slowly to be practical. Quite often these problems can be solved cheaply by adding more computer memory. Have a look a Cheap Computer Guys specification guide to determine the requirements of common operating systems and software.

Software Upgrades and performance:
If your computer seems to be slower than in used to be, maybe it is! Computers need maintainance to stay in top shape. The great news is that you can perform many computer maintainance tasks yourself for free! Try defragmenting your hard disk and checking your hard disk for bad sectors.

Ensure that there is free space on your hard disk, if not try archiving some old documents, removing programs you never use, or adding another hard disk. Other ways to increase the performance of your PC for free include removing unwanted programs from the StartUp folder, checking for and removing any 'adware' or 'spyware' from your computer, and checking for computer virus.

There are many good shareware and freeware utilities to help you with this available for download from download.com and tucows.com. If your computer is desperatly slow consider formatting the hard drive and re-installing the software. This isnt too tough a task, but remember to backup all your information and documents first.

Selection of software is very important to the performance of your computer. If you have an older PC consider whether you need all the bells and whistles of modern software. Do you really need Windows XP Professional or will Windows 95 or 98 do? Do you really need Microsoft Office XP or will an older version do? The older software packages are much more compact, taking up less room on your hard drive and requiring less system resources.

See Cheap Computer Guys specification guide for more on program size and resources used. Try using 'lite' programs such as the Opera browser in place of modern resource hungry programs. Many people run Linux (an open-source operating system) very successfully on cheap old computers.

There are many cheap and free programs (including Microsoft-compatable office packages) available for Linux users. See Cheap Computer Guys guide to cheap software for more on cheap and free software licenses.