by Jeremy Miller, Technician
When considering upgrades to your computer or network, planning is a very important part of the process. Planning can save you a lot of wasted time and money.
When planning your upgrades you will want to think about what all is involved and attempt to address any issues prior to installation to prevent down time as much as possible.
First you will need to understand what you need to upgrade. Can you upgrade your current setup or will you have to purchase entirely new equipment to upgrade? There are many components of an upgrade that may not work together with older technology.
You can find this a lot if you upgrade to a new workstation and some of your software is not compatible with the new operating system on the computer.
You will also find that older hardware sometimes cannot be upgraded with new hardware without replacing the motherboards or the whole computer.
Hardware and software both have limits on how much other software and hardware that they support.
A good example of this is: If you bought a good computer about 8 years ago the maximum amount of RAM you could use was about 4 gigabytes. It is now common to have 4 gigabytes to be the minimum amount of RAM installed.
Some software out there will not even run well unless it is over 4 gigabytes of RAM. The old computer cannot be upgraded with more RAM so you would need to purchase a new computer in order to get more RAM.
If you were to buy the RAM to upgrade the computer you may have just wasted time and money. This is why planning is so important.
If the upgrade is for an organization or business you may have purchased RAM for many workstations. A lot of time the RAM would be incompatible with a newer computer as well.
When planning for any type of computer or network upgrade you will want to look at how long you have already had your existing setup.
You can expect to get about 5 years out of any device whether it is a desktop, laptop, printer or other device. If your equipment is that old or older it is usually better to replace the equipment.
There are many reasons for upgrading versus updating. The biggest reason is that it is time to replace. Usually five years after you purchase your computer there is software and hardware that will make it very easy to upgrade.
If you wait much longer then your existing equipment will not be easily upgraded to the newer computers.
When you plan to upgrade your computers you can save money by getting deals or specials. This is because when you plan, you know what you will need and you can wait for sales or promotions.
If you do not plan then more than likely you will be upgrading when your computers start causing issues. This is not a good practice. You will end up having more down time due to low-performing computers and the time it will take to get the faulty computers fixed or replaced can easily end up costing more than the cost of replacing your workstations regularly.
We are always consulting clients and helping with upgrades and migrations, if you have any questions feel free to contact us. We are more than happy to help you with any sort of computer or network upgrades.