How to prevent your computer from becoming obsolete before its time

It's every computer shopper's nightmare: you buy what you think is a top-of-the-line computer expecting it to last at least a couple of years, and two days later someone comes out with a faster processor. Or worse still, you see the same system you bought advertised two months later for half the price you paid — or less.

With processor speeds doubling roughly every two years, this nightmare scenario is a reality far too often. Moore's Law, which states that the transistor density on computer microprocessors doubles every 18-24 months, continues to hold true. Fortunately, Crucial Technology has some recommendations for extending the useful life of your PC.

Purchase a system that can be upgraded later on.

You may be tempted to buy the latest, greatest (and most expensive) system. However, you can often save a considerable amount of money by choosing a mid-range system and upgrading it a couple of months or years down the road when the price for those higher-end components comes down. (Keep in mind that low-end systems often aren't upgradeable at all.) Upgrade your RAM first.

When your PC no longer seems to be keeping up with the newest software, a memory upgrade can greatly enhance your computer's performance. Consider this:

• Adding RAM can give a bigger performance boost than upgrading your processor. A faster processor promises more speed, but the processor can't deliver that speed without enough memory. In fact, a moderately fast processor with enough memory can out-perform a faster processor with inadequate memory. But before you pay the higher price for a system with more memory, consider adding memory after you buy the computer, which can save you money.
• Adding RAM is easy to do yourself. Crucial's Memory Advisor™ tool makes it easy to find the RAM that will work for your computer. After you receive your module, it's incredibly easy to install-just snap it into the memory slots! And if you have any questions, Crucial's tech support is just a phone call or e-mail away.
• Add the most megabytes that you can afford. Buying the highest number of megabytes (1 million bytes) or gigabytes (about 1,024 megabytes) that your system can accept will let you run today's advanced feature-packed software and will also "future-proof" your computer for new technology and applications that will certainly come along.

  If the memory upgrade will fill all the slots in your system, it's even more important to get as much memory (megabytes) as you can, because once you fill your memory slots, you have to remove some of the existing memory to make room for new, higher-capacity modules. Pay particular attention to this if you have a Mac (which often come with only one or two memory slots) or a dual-channel system (which will use up more slots at a time because you must install the memory in pairs).

So before you throw away your old system, consider upgrading your RAM instead. In most cases, a memory upgrade can greatly enhance your computer's performance for a fraction of the price of a new system!

Adding more memory is typically the easiest and least expensive way to get more performance from your computer. The right memory upgrade can increase the performance of your computer by 43 percent!

About our test system
The zero-point test bed is a Dell OptiPlex GX260 with a Pentium 4 2.0GHz processor, 128MB of Crucial PC2100 DDR memory, 20GB IBM DTLA 307020 ATA-100, with a screen resolution of 1024 x 768 x 32, and running Windows XP Professional. Benchmark tests using Multimedia Content Creation Winstone 2003 v 1.0 show the performance increase with the addition of 256MB, 512MB, and 1GB of PC2100 memory. Benchmarks were performed by Crucial in September, 2003. Actual performance will vary based on configuration, usage, and manufacturing variability.

Test results show that more RAM makes photo editing, video editing, and sound editing faster

Tests conducted in the Crucial Performance Lab show just how dramatic the effects of a memory upgrade can be. We measured the impact of additional RAM on a computer used for editing images, audio, video, and Web pages. Test results found that upgrading the RAM from 128MB to just 512MB can increase performance up to 35 percent! The same system saw a 43 percent gain in overall performance when upgraded to 1GB of RAM! That means faster computing, plus fewer "lock-ups" and less time spent waiting for your computer to do its thing.