Author Bio: Charlotte is a technology enthusiast with a variety of interests across the industry. As well as having a passion for laptops, she is also learning about how businesses can use managed VPS hosting solutions to their advantage.
Although they might be starting to lose some ground and market share to tablets and smartphones, laptops remain one of the most important technological products of the last 20 years. However, as good as laptops are, they can be extremely frustrating to deal with, especially if you’re not particularly tech savvy and your answer to any problems is simply to buy a new product every time it starts to let you down or annoy you.
However, before you head to the store and shell out a reasonable proportion of your monthly salary, you should think about any upgrades that might be available. When should you upgrade, and how should you go about it?
The ‘As You Go’ Upgrades
Before we start getting into the more technical and technological side of things, the first thing to do to ensure your laptop is working as well as it should be is to make sure you’re set up to automatically download and install upgrades that are made available online. These might come from your laptop manufacturer or through Microsoft, Linux, Apple, or whoever powers your operating system.
In addition, it is worth ensuring processes like disk defragmenter are set to automatically work on a regular basis, as this’ll help keep your system running quicker, too.
Time or Performance?
The big problem for most people is that they haven’t any idea when they might need to start considering upgrades. Should they be thinking in terms of the time they’ve owned a laptop, or should they be looking at the performance of their system and waiting for it to slow down?
The best approach is to have both things in mind. Obviously, it is impossible to say definitively that a laptop is going to start slowing down or losing performance after two years, but it is generally a good benchmark to have in mind. Start looking at upgrades around this time, irrespective of whether performance is still good, as if nothing else at least you’ll be taking a proactive approach to maintaining your laptop.
Where to Look for Upgrades
The trick to this part is to know what your laptop already has supporting it. Many laptop engineers might talk about and try to sell you a more powerful processor, but in many cases, the difference such an upgrade makes can be negligible.
Carry out your own research, as well as using respected industry magazines and websites. Given the state of the economy around the world, almost all of them now run regular features about saving money on laptop upgrades, or alternatives to buying a new laptop, and will fill you with ideas. Outside of this, look for independent engineers and stores who will give honest, unbiased advice about which laptop upgrades are most suitable for you. Sometimes, you’ll hear that your best option is simply to buy a new one, but why spend a lot straight away when you might be able to spend a fraction and enjoy noticeable performance upgrades.
Upgrading Your Laptop
There is never a set time to upgrade your laptop, but you should always keep the two year benchmark in mind, while continuing to monitor performance.
