Slow poke!
|It’s a common story; you buy the latest and greatest computer and it runs well for the first few months but then you begin to find that everything is starting to slow down. It takes 10 minutes just to get everything going in the morning and opening a word document becomes an epic battle of wits between man and machine. Surely it’s a conspiracy to get you to buy a new computer?
But that isn’t the case. Let me explain why.
When you buy a brand new computer it’s designed to just work and that’s the appeal but there are a few common things that occur which can slow down your system and end up costing you time, productivity and money.
When new software is installed, background services are added that run even when you aren’t using the software; these services use system resources like the processor and memory. Usually this isn’t an issue at first but as more software is installed deliberately or without you knowing (viruses or malware) the system resources get used more and more and ultimately slow down your computer’s overall performance.
What about where all your data is stored? When your computer is performing all of its tasks it is accessing your hard drive at a blazing pace. As more data is saved and deleted the more fragmented the drive becomes. Imagine trying to read a book where half of the sentence you are reading is at the start of the book and you have to flip to the back of the book to read the second half. It would take much longer to finish the book. A fragmented hard drive means the system has to work much harder to access your data and slows down the response time of your computer.
Drivers and updates while important, are a double-edged sword. When you buy a computer, it is seldom completely up to date with security and software patches, but it still works. To ensure it keeps working with the latest software and hardware, small changes need to be made by the way of updates. Most of the time an update helps your system continue to run smoothly by fixing bugs, security issues or introducing new features. At other times these same updates slow down your computer because they just weren’t designed to run on the hardware you have. So, its damned if you do and damned if you don’t, right? Not really. Making sure your system’s drivers and software are up-to-date is one of the best things you can do but you do need to check the compatibility of the driver or update with your computer’s model and hardware and you won’t have a problem.
Even with all of this to consider there will be times when the hardware you have just can’t deliver the performance you need in order to run certain applications or keep the overall speed of your system at a usable level and you may have to upgrade the hardware, but you don’t always have to buy a new computer. It’s often far cheaper to assess your needs and upgrade to the required hardware by saving you time in not having to migrate your data and software to a new computer.
Gradual slow down isn’t usually cause for concern and can be easily fixed in most cases. However, if you ever notice that your system suddenly slows down for no apparent reason, there could be a greater underlying issue and you should have it looked at as quickly as possible. Hardware failure may by imminent which has the potential for data loss or a particular nasty virus could be playing games with your computer and sensitive data.
For more information on how Hypercore can help you speed up your computer and increase your productivity and system reliability please contact us and one of our friendly technicians will be more than happy to assist you.