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Upgrading
computers has always been a real problem
Upgrading
computers has always been a real problem despite the fact that each
time you buy a new computer, everyone tells you that there is plenty
of space and capacity for upgrading. Why is this such a problem and
why does it seem that each time you want to upgrade your computer, you
end up going out and buying a new one. Well for starters, the real
problem lies in how fast the computer industry is moving. While the
Intel Pentium III is today’s current computer processor available
with most new computers, it has only been around for over a year now
and when most of the computers were manufactured, they had no idea
what was in store for upgrading.
But lets start at the beginning. When you buy a new computer,
one of the most common questions is can I upgrade the computer later.
The easy answer is yes. But what the sales person is saying yes to and
what you are asking about are two different questions. Let me explain.
When you talk to a sales person and ask them about upgrades, they
think in terms of adding more memory, more disk space, better CD ROM
drives, DVD, Scanners, Digital Cameras, and the like. In fact, there
are a ton of things you can add to your computer and we haven’t even
touched the surface of software, entertainment, and the internet. The
problem is that this is not the question you wanted answered. You want
to know that if I buy this computer, can I turn it into the mega
monster of the future and the answer is probably not.
Well, why not? The answer is in the computer industry. As each new
generation of computer processor comes out, we have found that they
require a darn near complete overhaul in components and what is needed
to run the processor from the main boards to memory to even the power
supplies. Lets start with the newest offerings from Intel. The Pentium
III processor from Intel was introduced on February 17, 1999 and the
newest Pentium III processors use a different way of plugging into the
mainboard than did the Pentium II (introduced November 1997) which
used a different way of plugging into the mainboard than did the
Pentium. While the jump from the Pentium II to the III was not that
major in components affected, there were still enough changes to make
you think about the cost of upgrading. First was the mainboard. If you
purchased your computer in say May 1998 (two years ago), there was no
such thing as the Pentium III and in fact, the fastest your computer
could go 350 megahertz so the newer 500 megahertz computers would
require a new mainboard. You will also need new memory as the bus
speed (the speed at which the computer talks to everyone else in the
box) was only 66 megahertz versus the newest computer’s 133
megahertz, again, something that cannot be upgraded and in fact, you
would need to replace. And so the real problem is that as technology
moves so fast, the computer you purchased five years ago has actually
been surpassed several times in computer technology since then.
The other issue regarding upgrades in horsepower and speed is
that when you do upgrade, you want to be able to see an appreciable
difference in performance. It is not worth the expense and time to
upgrade a computer from a 233 to a 266 megahertz processor as you will
only really see a 14% increase in performance at the most. That kind
of an upgrade will not make your computer sit up and be noticed and
you will quickly decide that you just wasted your money. So if you are
at the point where you still want to get more out of your old
computer, what can you do? Well for starters, look at the memory and
disk drive. Windows95 could only really take advantage of 32 Megabytes
of memory in your computer while Windows98 will use what ever you have
and can get your hands on. For Windows98 computers, my recommendation
is to have at a minimum 64MB of RAM. Windows takes up a lot of
resources in your computer and memory is the first thing it uses and
if you are like most people using your computer, you will have a ton
of little icons sitting on your Task Bar (the bar with the Start
Button) that while they look like they aren’t doing much, are in
fact, active and using memory. For people doing a lot of different
things on their computer at the same time, I would recommend
installing 128MB of RAM. For those of you with Pentium II or Pentium
III computers, the memory can easily be added to your computer. If you
are using an older Pentium I class computer, it will be more difficult
as it uses a different kind of memory chip than the newer computers.
Be sure to check the manual that came with your computer before doing
any shopping and in fact, you might want to have the technicians at a
computer store check it out for you. The other problem with older
Pentium computers is that if you have already done a memory upgrade on
your computer, you may find you have run out of room to install memory
and in fact, will have to remove some memory to install the newer. Let
me explain. Older Pentium computers use memory chips two at a time and
these computers have only 4 memory slots. That means that when you
purchased your computer, more than likely, the manufacturer installed
two memory chips. That is how you got 8MB or 16MB or 32MB of RAM. If
you added memory later to get you up to say 24MB or 48MB or 64MB, they
probably added two more memory modules to your computer, thus filling
up all your available memory slots. So check before adding any more
memory as you might find it is not worth the expense.
The second Item you can do is to add disk space. I have always used
the rule of thumb to triple the current amount of disk drive you have
on your computer when adding. Again, there can be some complications.
Older Windows95 computers have a limitation in that they can only see
2 Gigabytes of space on a drive. So if you had purchased a 4 GB drive
with your computer, what they had to do was to “Partition” the
drive in to two segments. You then ended up with a 2GB “C” drive
and a 2GB “D” drive and your CD ROM drive ended up being drive
“E”. Imagine what would happen if you had a 10GB drive. You would
have a “C”, “D”, “E”, “F”, and a “G” drive, all
2GB in size each. What happens here is that when you install software
on your computer, it always wants to install it on your “C” drive
and so your “C” drive starts to fill up. You might still have an
empty “D” drive but when your “C” drive fills up, all sorts of
unpleasant things begin to happen. Your internet sessions bog down,
your programs become incredibly slow, and your computer starts to
crash with program errors. And in fact it gets worse because if you
take your computer into be upgraded and they give you a bigger drive,
you quickly discover that your “C” drive size has not changed!
Another complication to upgrading hard drives is that some computers
have a physical limitation to the size of a drive that they can see.
Many older computers cannot see drives larger than 8GB with out having
to install special driver software and I strongly recommend against
doing that. That software can easily be corrupted by many different
situations and once that drive gets corrupted, you can easily loose
everything on your hard drive. So
what to do?
First would be to consider upgrading your software to Windows98.
Windows98 has a couple of features that make disk management easier,
more flexible, and gives you the ability to better utilize all the
space on your hard drive. The
first is what is called FAT32. FAT32 is nothing more than a better way
of keeping track of files on your hard drive than it did with the
older DOS/Windows and Windows95. FAT32 allows your computer to see all
of your hard drive as a single drive so that if your “C” drive is
getting full, you actually can increase the size of your “C”
drive. Another benefit of FAT32 is that it is much more efficient in
keeping track of files to the point of actually recovering a lot of
wasted space on the disk drive. Also, Windows98 removes that 2GB
limitation on the size of the partitions for your computer. Now it
won’t do away with the physical limitation on the size of a disk
drive that your computer can see as I mentioned above but you can
actually use what you do have.
Getting from Windows95 to Windows98 requires only installing the
Windows98 Upgrade which costs from $90 to $110. You do need to be sure
you have enough space on your “C” drive to install the upgrade.
Once that is done, you can go over to a program called FAT32 Converter
to free up more space on your “C” drive. Now the problem of all
those other partitions on your computer, the “D”, “E”, and
“F” drives will need some additional help and that can come from a
program called Partition Magic from PowerQuest Corp. This really
useful program will take those unwanted extra partitions and allow you
to combine them with your “C” drive to give you a much bigger
“C” drive. It is a wonderful but very powerful piece of software
and I strongly recommend that if you decide to use this package, you
make sure you have backed up all your files and documents on your
computer before you get started. Any time you use a computer program
that alters the configuration of your hard drive can cause serious
problems if things go wrong.
If you have already upgraded to Windows98 and still need more disk
space, you have a couple of options. You can always add another disk
drive to your computer as a drive “D” or you could replace the
current drive with a larger one. For people that tell me they know
nothing about computers, I always recommend the latter approach. What
the store can do for you is to install a new larger drive and transfer
all your data to the new drive and so when you turn on your computer
again, you now have a much larger “C” drive than what you had
before and none of your programs or files have been affected. By far,
the cleanest and neatest approach.
As you can see, there are a lot of issues to think about when
upgrading your computer and why it may seem that the best alternative
might be a new one. Again, always look at what it will cost you and
compare that to the cost of a new system. My rule of thumb is that if
the upgrades cost more than the half the cost of a new computer, think
twice about it.
Robert
Sanborn
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Robert
Sanborn is an Independent Personal Computer Consultant, General
Manager for That Computer Store in Indianapolis, IN, and the Program
Chairman for the Indianapolis Computer Society. Reach him through the
net at sansoft@in.net |
