Upgrading a computer system

When upgrading a computer system there are many things you must always look into before overloading on the lastest software and hardware. You must pay particular attention to the specifications the computer already has and try to judge what components you want to upgrade.

• Hard drive - When you feel that you require more hard drive space, be it that you have plans for the new space or you simply cannot fit any more data on your current one you should always consider whether or not you are willing to free up some space, if not you should not always look for the cheapest one on the market. When browsing for a larger hard drive you should pay particular attention to how much memory capacity it can hold, and whether or not it is external or internal (external being that you will not have to fit it inside the computers casing.) An external hard drive is a very useful tool, it can be plugged in using USB and can come in a variety of different sizes including up to 320 Gb sata to the public, now thats a lot of memory. With the external USb connection the device can also be easily and neatly tidied away again. With drive memory being measured in Gb it can be divided into being 1000 mb to every gb and 1000 kb to every mb so as you can see its a lot of space. Also you computer should be able to hold a decent amount of RAM which is measured in Gb also, mostly though the ram stores only operating systems settings and various other boot up tasks.


• Microprocessor - When you feel that you wish to upgrade your Microprocessing chip you should always be wary of how many Ghz the new and current chips can process. Ghz is how fast the chip can process information leading to a faster speed of general computer operation. You should find and compare how fast the current chip is with a new chip that you are prepared to pay for, you wouldnt want to pay a fortune for something that processes at more or less the same speed that you currently have. Also when selecting a new processor be aware that fitting, installing the new one and removing the old one are an extremely difficult task to an untrained expert, so be prepared to pay extra. With the chip being placed underneath a heat sink or fan and heat sink the other components will have to be removed and the computer rebuilt to install the new processor.
  
• Operating systems - Sometimes an upgrade to another operating system can speed up your computer and add an entirely new feel to your pc. Upgrading from lets say Windows Xp to Windows Vista will give a whole new edge to the pc being that the Windows creators have installed various upgrades into this new operating system including firewall and anti-virus upgrades, security upgrades and general design upgrades. Also upgrading to an entirely new operating system provider, lets say Windows to Linux can also be useful depending on personal preference. Be wary when choosing a new operating system however, when trying to install the new software it will be necessary to format everything else and install the os from scratch. Once the hard drive has been formatted the computer will be empty and you will be asked for the serial number on insertion of the operating system disk, a wizard will guide you the rest of the way through installation.


• Internet explorer - Personally on my upgrade from internet explorer to firefox i noticed a considerable change in broadband speed, pages seemed to load almost instantly as opposed to waiting for an irritating amount of time. Apart from having to download a few plugins for quicktime and windows media player i had no problems with the upgrade and change over. To upgrade to the new software i simply entered the firefox website and downloaded the latest version. After downloading and installation i had to restart my computer but once restarted i was surfing the web in luxury.