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Community weekly poll: What is the number one reason you upgrade your computer?
- 5/10/06 3:57 PM
What is the number one reason you upgrade your computer?
by Marc Bennett - 5/10/06 3:57 PM
What is the number one reason you upgrade your computer to a new one?
Faster processing speed (tell us more)
Software demands for games, video editing, and so on (tell us more)
Video card compatibility (tell us more)
Expansion slot availability (tell us more)
Memory expansion (tell us more)
More storage space (tell us more)
Old computer was on its last legs (tell us more)
I just have to have the latest and greatest (tell us more)
I always update individual components and never the entire system (your reason?)
Other (what is it?)
Flamable Caps
by mwooge - 5/12/06 1:58 AM In reply to: What is the number one reason you upgrade your computer? by Marc Bennett
My computer had been rebooting at intervals of hours or days, and I find the cause is swollen capacitors on the motherboard. Then I'm told these faulty caps can ignite...
Faster Processing Speed...
by nadrosis - 5/12/06 2:46 AM In reply to: What is the number one reason you upgrade your computer? by Marc Bennett
...My last major upgrade has lasted about 8 years now.
I was running a whopping 400 mhz. until about 3 years ago. I did a minor cpu upgrade to 850 mhz. There I was week before last just sitting there buzzing at 850 mhz. when things started going wrong with the computer. To make a slightly lengthy story shorter; I invested in an intel 336 dual core 2.8 ghz cpu, 2 giga-bytes of ram, two Seagate 500 ghz. sata hard drives, a cd/dvd reader/burner optical drive, a Xion 600 watt power supply, and a 19'' Acer LCD amongst other goodies. You get the jist...I think I can do anything now and not have to justify it with anyone...haha. Lucky me. Your friend, Eddie B.
Don't know about upgrading....
by crazeebob2000 - 5/14/06 7:36 PM In reply to: Faster Processing Speed... by nadrosisA friends motherboard fried (capacitors bulging and all), anyway, she gave me the dead puter I have the RAM stick in this one now. The dead one had an AMD 2600+ processor in it and the cd/dvd drive is ok, so I'm gonna build one from the spare parts from that stuff.Oops! I meant Athlon XP 2600+. I'll have to get a new power supply also.(never trusted emachines stuff much).
The need for speed
by kooby - 5/12/06 2:49 AM In reply to: What is the number one reason you upgrade your computer? by Marc Bennett
I've upgraded just about everything in my computer. I've changed cases twice, added 2 additional hard drives (one of which with a pci sata card) changed the power supply twice and replaced my original dvd burner and dvd rom drive with a DVD rom/cdrw drive and a dual layer dvd burner, upgraded from 512 megs of ram to 1536, added an extra ethernet card, tv tuner card and also upgraded from 9600 pro (ati) to a 6600gt 128 meg card. I also added a floppy drive funnily enough
The only thing I haven't done is upgraded the cpu (I have one of thoes old athlon 2700+) however I definately have had my use out of it considering its been running for almost 1 and 3 quarter years straight!
Considering my motherboard does not have onboard gigabit lan, onboard sata, agp and firewire my next upgrade will probably the biggest one which will probably involve all brand new parts. I'll prob be heading for one of the dual core cpus from AMD.
Well that's my story.
The ONLY reason to upgrade !
by kirk72552 - 5/12/06 4:45 AM In reply to: What is the number one reason you upgrade your computer? by Marc Bennett
There is only one reason to upgrade. That is: "when your current rig cannot do something that you want to do". This simple advice will save you a lot of money.
I'm with you on that
by BlueKnight - 5/12/06 12:46 PM In reply to: The ONLY reason to upgrade ! by kirk72552I have other things to spend my money on besides the latest in home computing technology. Go ahead, call me cheap, but long ago I upgraded an IBM PC/XT-286 to an AMD 386/40 and ran the legs off of it. I finally needed to have more speed out of my machine so I upgraded to a Pentium MMX and proceeded to run that into the ground. The monitor was beginning to go, so I got a surplus 17'' from work for $30 and it was good again. Then I found I needed more memory than my machine could support in addition to more disk space.
I finally made the jump from that old Pentium MMX running Win 95b to a current model Pentium with XP Pro.
In the time I went thru 3 changes from the original machine, I know guys who upgraded no less than 6 times.
And the old machine is still in use! I donated it to Project Read along with all the documentation, device drivers, several legal OS copies, and some good spare parts. They were thrilled to get it.
Just about dead...
by ryuko098 - 5/12/06 9:50 AM In reply to: What is the number one reason you upgrade your computer? by Marc Bennett
I had the same iBook laptop for about 3 years before I bought a eMachines desktop to help ease the pain of my aging machine - not to mention compatability problems. Now, I've upgraded the RAM, added a wifi card, and a couple USB peripherals, and installed Linux as inexpensive fixes to enable me to keep my system somewhat modern (it's now 4 years old). Now if only I can figure out how to get PPC flash working, I might not need a new laptop for another year! 
My CPU and board died...
by nathanpsz2 - 5/12/06 11:49 AM In reply to: What is the number one reason you upgrade your computer? by Marc Bennett
...so I upgraded from a P4 to an A64. I'm going to wait until Vista comes out to upgrade the RAM and the video card.
Tradeoff between increased performance and cost
by ZORBA1110 - 5/12/06 11:56 AM In reply to: What is the number one reason you upgrade your computer? by Marc Bennett
The bottom line for spending monies for increased computer performance is, pure and simple, because I can and want to. If we say anything else we are deluding ourselves.
I'll tell you several techniques I use in deciding to upgrade: 1) I must be able to double whatever parameter I am attempting to improve.
Examples - CPU computing...going from a 1,800 MHz to a Athlon 3200+; Video card...going from a TI-4600 to a FX-5900 to a 6600GT; HD size...going from a 40GB to a 80 GB to a 200 GB; Memory RAM...going from 256MB CL3 to 1GB (2/512MB) dual channel CL2
2) Another technique I use is to watch the market when a new cutting edge component appears for sale. Example - motherboards with the 939 Athlon 64 cpu socket...the older 754 Athlon 64 cpu motherboards dropped in cost by a factor of 4 or more (from 150 to 40).
IMHO, Your machine doesn't have to be close to the cutting edge in order to provide excellent performance, especially in typical business apps!
OTOH, With database engines there is no such thing as a SQL server that is too fast, has too much memory or HD space, etc...
Ciao...JJ
What is the number one reason you upgrade your computer?
by popeyedasailorman - 5/12/06 1:12 PM In reply to: What is the number one reason you upgrade your computer? by Marc Bennett
I normally wait until the next major innovation or advance in a particular type of technology. The first PC i bought was a 286 based unit, 128K standard VGA 16 colour graphics, 3 ISA slots and about 4 MB of RAM .. (which was considered to be vast and unnecessary in those days..!) i didn't see the point in upgrading until i heard about PCI, by which time the first of the Pentium processors were knocking around, then after that USB and AGP were becoming popular .. it was about 6 years before i bothered to upgrade, by that time Windows XP was well and truly established, I'm thinking about upgrading now having given consideration to PCI express and SATA though i'm a bit skint at the moment .. probably from buying too many PCs...
Multiple Reasons.... and boy did I have problems!
by simon.manandhar - 5/12/06 1:26 PM In reply to: What is the number one reason you upgrade your computer? by Marc Bennett
My CPU is an AMD Socket A, and when I looked for a faster CPU in Socket A's I couldnt find any! I decided to get a AMD Athlon 64 Bit Dual Core, but now I need a new Mainboard! Also my Video Card is getting on in age and speed.Its ok for most games I have, but it lacks most of the options, speed and flexibility I need for the good games I want. Its an old nVidia GeForce 4 mx440, with only 64 MB of RAM. I decided to go online and bought a wonderfull new video card to power what I DID have. a GeForce 6 6600LE with 256MB DDR RAM. Wonderfull speed, great Graphics power, all I was looking for in a Video card. BUT there was 1 drawback! I bought a PCI Express card, not an AGP card, which is all my motherboard uses! So, i decided its time to upgrade everything except my Hard Drives (for now). I can get some good deals from places such as eBay, Deals Direct, etc., for parts to make my comp. i even saw a NEW! case for only $45 with a 400W power supply (if I win the bid).
It was my boyfriend's computer!
by marymm - 5/12/06 2:13 PM In reply to: What is the number one reason you upgrade your computer? by Marc Bennett
It was my boyfriend's computer and every time that something went wrong, I got blamed for it. I bought myself a lovely eMachine with NO headaches--over a year and running beautifully! He's still struggling to keep his dinosaur running--has to shut it off multiple times each session as it continously freezes (HP--third one all others dead including one DOA). I've still worked on his for him when he's ready to throw it out the window (he now realizes it was me that kept his running--ha ha!) so that it has some functionality but it's as close to dead as you can get (fan freezes, Windows ME!) Tried to get him to upgrade his software at least but no luck with that although he did add some memory.
Usually just what needs replacing/updating
by ehalpe - 5/12/06 4:33 PM In reply to: What is the number one reason you upgrade your computer? by Marc Bennett
I don't often update the whole system at once. I reuse whatever I've updated by building into the kids computers or passing it on to my father for incorporation into another computer. I find that unless I need to update the motherboard, which can make other bits incompatible, I don't really have to update everything and therefore save the expense of having to do that.
Go Mac
by geezer10 - 5/12/06 5:00 PM In reply to: What is the number one reason you upgrade your computer? by Marc Bennett
I had a pretty new Toshiba SAtalite series and then the charger got all messed up. I also wanted to run more enchanced programs like Avid and Pro Tool so I upgraded to a Mac and i will never go back!
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