Full disclosure, I would probably be considered by many to be a border line tree hugger. Among other things, I hate throwing items away which can be reused or recycled by either myself or someone else, especially hazardous things such as computers. That said, I always try to “max out” what I have before considering getting something new.
Recently I upgraded an aging Dell machine at work (with some help from the forum) to better a processor. The processor upgrade essentially maxed out the machine as the memory is at capacity and the processor is one step below the max.
The user has definitely noticed the difference and this has prolonged our need for a new machine for probably another 6-12 months. The grand total for this upgrade was $22. Following my other belief that you buy only what you need, we have definitely saved money on this machine by upgrading the memory and processor as we go… not to mention the money saved by extending the life of the machine.
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sometimes the cost of individual components is more expensive than replacing the entire machine. noted the price of ide hard drives and agp graphics lately? maybe its just here in new zealand, but prices for those are bordering on ridiculous at the moment.
Yeh I know what you mean: A friend of mine once called round with her old box and asked me if I could get it working again. Without thinking I just told her to leave it on the test-bench.
In short the 16MB AGP graphics card needed replacing. Rather than buy something better new I bought the same item cheap on ebay, but even then it took a long search to find it. When I put that in it displaced something else and I had to faultfind that too; remove another card and file a corroded contact, replace card. – Then I noticed that the hard-drive was under 2GBs, so I phoned her ad asked if she needed more room on the drive. She replied that when the drive started filling up she just uninstalled “unnecessary programs like the anti-virus”
-What had I got myself into here?! A week later I almost paid her to take it away I was so fed up with the sight of it.
There’s a limit, and when a computer passes that limit then if you’re a tech you’ll know when to consign it to the great recycling yard in the sky by putting it to work as a boat-anchor.
I had a batch job to do for charity last week, yielding similar results.
and speaking of the “great recycling yard in the sky” I just sent a whole lot of dead stuff to our e-waste collection day – talk about a poorly organised setup with a one-way door type policy – there looked like a lot of good gear being thrown out by people. the car ahead of us had 4 or 5 unused crt monitors in it – still in their boxes!!
It seems that after roughly two years that doing an upgrade means replacing the CPU, motherboard and RAM because to change one you have to change the others….at that point you have effectively replaced the computer.
yeah… if you get away with only upgrading the cpu, then its a cheap upgrade, anything more than that is total replacement.
I’ll probably upgrade mine next year. I’m waiting for USB3. New MB and Processor, maybe a new GPU.
Usually, the general rule of thumb is not to spend more than $200-$300 on an upgrade (unless it’s a specialty part). After that, you may want to look at pricing out a new PC.
I have subscribed to this line of rationale for sometime, however, it does take some foresight in order for it to work well. It has been my practice to spend the better chunk of money purchasing a motherboard that spans several technologies with regards to processors, memory, and open slots for additional hard drives or expansion cards. I have been able to get some boxes to last a little over a decade with minimal expense on upgrades and repairs including power supplies. Although, this practice works better for desktops than it does for laptops.
I also cling to components as well since I am unable to find a way to properly dispose of them in the city where I live. Sounds like a PCMech article waiting to be written.
As a side note, I want to commend Jason on his posts. They have been very helpful to me as I have been trying to move towards implementing more Open Source programs and applications on the systems I support as well as the ones I own. Thanks, Jason! Keep up the great work.
I too have to hoard everything because our small community does not have any “e-disposal” and I get tired of hiding everything in the bottom of the barrel. I keep getting older machines with running XP with only 256 Mb of RAM, but the old style RAM is getting harder to find. Generally, if I can’t do a RAM upgrade I tell my customers the only option is to upgrade the MOBO and that requires new/used RAM & a new CPU which with labor, approaches 50-60% of a new desktop. Surprisingly though, some wish to do that rather than buy or have me build them a new desktop. Thanks for the great articles.