It’s the age-old computer problem – my computer works, but not well. “What could possibly be going on? When I bought this computer, it was as fast as can be” you ask yourself.
There’s a plethora of reasons to consider when pondering why your beautiful workhorse has slowed down a little, often it’s not a case of your machine getting slower, but really the services it interacts with becoming more advanced or demanding.
Here’s a quick run-down of why most of your issues are probably resolvable.
Web Browsing
The way we use the internet has changed several times since its inception, from what we use it for, to how we use it. This is a big issue for considerably older machines.
As a trade off for functionality on websites, such as animations, videos and even applications like Office365, the requirements of running webpages has increased. Unfortunately for your older computer, much more so than previously required when websites were essentially multiple paged word documents with plain text.
Operating systems, Applications and Software
In much the same way as websites have changed, systems and software these days offers more functionality and power than ever before, unfortunately so, at the cost of hardware requirements.
Hardware
While we’ve looked at the software side of things, hardware can be as much to blame.
At Computer Assistance, when we look to upgrade a machine, the main factor of consideration is the CPU. To put everything into perspective, originally CPUs had only a single core for processing the data sent to it, these days however, consumer desktop CPUs are available with as many as 16 cores.
Windows 10 as an operating system often requires nearly this entire core in older machines, meaning no room is left for using the computer. In these cases, we would always recommend you buy a new machine and allow us to move your old data onto the new computer for your convenience.
Another thing to consider is temperatures. Computers love to get hot, and in fact this increases efficiency typically, however at a certain level of heat, this becomes problematic. Most parts of a computer are designed to reduce power or performance, doing so in order to reduce temperatures to ensure your desktop doesn’t catch fire. Loose wires, old wires, dust build-up or old fans can all be an issue in this regard.
The largest breakthrough in recent years is the mass implementation of SSDs, a faster storage device than the traditional, magnetic disk-spinning hard drives. SSDs can drastically improve your computer’s performance, even on dated hardware – in fact, Windows 10 pretty much demands it and running Windows 10 otherwise can be slow, painful and extremely problematic.
Laptop slow? Battery health and power settings could be the key to speeding up your machine.
Don’t fret
Pretty much most of the issues above can be resolved by making upgrades, clean-ups and replacements. If you’re having any of the above issues, give us a call or pop-in for a quote on moving forward with speeding up your computer.
If your computer is a little too old to update, buy a new machine through us and we can set the computer up exactly like your old one, not leaving you scratching your head as to where your files have gone.
Finally, above is only a handful of regular issues and problems we run in to, if there is something we haven’t mentioned above and you’re looking for expert advice, get in contact!
All of our contact details can be found on our website, alternatively, email [email protected]