About Technology

By Grant Price III

It happens at least once in the life of every notebook computer- it slows down in performance, and just doesn't have the get up and go that it used to. Like most people, you run your favorite antivirus program(s) to make sure that "bugs" haven't infected your system, and you even run spyware programs to make sure that spyware isn't overloading your system resources. To take things a step further you clear out unnecessary items from your start menu, make bios adjustments and get rid of old programs you haven't used in a while.

After all that, your laptop computer still runs slow and you realize - it's time for an upgrade.

Once upon a time, laptop and notebook upgrades were considered "technician only" activities because of the fact most notebook manufacturers have proprietary technologies in their systems. That is still true to some extent, but the main hardware components affecting system performance in most laptops are those that have become pretty much industry standard. These are:

1. Hard Drive
2. Memory
3. Processor

These components can be easily replaced in most notebooks. The first thing to do however is to determine if the upgrade is worth the cost. Check prices online to see how much it will cost. If I pay $120 for a hard drive, $50 for memory and $150 for a new processor, it may not make sense to do all three upgrades, I may only want to choose 1 at first and then check system performance.

If my laptop wasn't very expensive to begin with, I may want to consider just purchasing another one. If I can get a Windows Vista HP laptop for $499.00, that may make more sense than upgrading.