Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners Computer upgrade help.

I've had my computer about 5 years now and after reading about Ken's and others hard drive failures I'm thinking about upgrading.
I really don't know much about computers, my current system is a Gateway with a Pentium (R) 4cpu 2.53ghz, 75GB with 512 MB of Ram.
I'll probably have to go with something from Comp USA or Best Buy.
A DVD burner is a must and possibly something in HD. I don't play games or listen to music on the computer.
I have no idea what I should be looking for, possible brands or cost, also will I be able to use my current hard drive as my backup source?
Thanks

It sounds like you're just looking for a basic computer for internet, email, word processing and the like. If your current system meets your needs, why not just install a new hard drive and some additional RAM? Both are very cheap upgrades. Your CPU should be fine. You can also add a DVD burner pretty easily. There are lots of websites that will walk you through opening the case and installing new components.

When you say something in HD, are you referring to a HD DVD burner, or outputting HD content to your TV? HD DVD burners are a little pricey still, and the final battle in the format war has not yet been won, although Blu-Ray would be your best bet right now.

Whether you go for the upgrades or a new computer, your biggest headache will be transferring files and settings. I'm not familiar with Vista, but Windows XP does not make this easy or fun.

If you have your heart set on a new computer I recommend that you check out Dell Outlet. They sell returned and refurbished systems for significantly less than new, with lots of stuff under $1000. I've bought many items from them and never had a problem.

Don't be too freaked out about hard drive failures. Although they do happen, it's VERY rare. As long as you back up your important information, it's only a minor inconvenience.

Hope this helps.

My question to you would be:

Are you experiencing any problems or slowdowns with your current computer?

If the answer is no, there is no need to upgrade yet.

Re: drive failures.

Always back up your importnt data. These days its so simple and cheap to pick up a usb harddrive and backup onto that as often as you need. You could also just upgrade your drive and use the old one for backup.

On HD playback. It seems that HD decoding is going to reside on hadware on the video card. If you need/want to do do HD playback via comuter, pick up an hd drive (there is a HD-dvd/ \Bluray combo player out there for about $300 now)and one of the new video cards made for hd playback.

The advantage of waiting to upgrade until lack of computing power becomes an issue is that stuff keeps getting,bigger,better faster and cheaper at an amazing rate. The longer you wait now, the longer it will be until your next upgrade.

For example, until last month, I was quite happy running on an old P3 500. I upgraded because I wanted to do dvd playback to a newly purchased high def. display and couldn't do that with my P3. I skipped an entire generation of cpu because I just didn't need it.

Once the high def format war finishes, I will add an hd player and add a graphics card with hardware based hd decoding.
If you really want to upgrade, you can always put your old drive on the new system and use it for backup.

So, if you don't need to just yet, wait.

In another year, Intel will have moved to a 45nm process for all its cpus (smaller, better and faster while using much less power than your p4), all the motherboards will have updated to the new processor format, ddr3 memory will become more mainstream and affordable and most of the early driver problems with hardware decoding of hd material should be resolved.

Fred

My computer seems to take longer to do things, but I haven't really had any problems with it yet.
I'll go down this weekend and look at some USB harddrives for backup purposes and see what other offers are out there.
Since I don't know that much about computers I wasn't sure how much they have advanced in the last few years.
Thanks for the help guys.

Homedad, I pretty much had the same system as you, but it was emachines and upgraded the ram to 1 gig. Had it for about 4.5 years and 2 weeks ago my powr supply and motherboard went. It was getting slow, but I think my Nortons had something to do with that.

Just received my new Dell Inspiron with AMD athlon processor, 2gig ram, 360gig drive and Vista.

I saw an Acer with similar spec and my neighbour in the IT business said that Acer, Gateway, emachines are prone to failure. He fixes them a lot and replaces them, plus he told me to go look at the stores that sell refurbs or tigerdirect and I will see a lot of Gateway, Emachines on there for that reason.

Make sure you backup your important data as you might be heading for a breakdown like I had. My new computer is fast compared to my old one, but vista takes some getting used to.