U25_M2 - Recommend upgrades

Introduction

In order to suggest what upgrades would be beneficial to a system I picked one computer I had been working on as a base. Specific suitable upgrades will vary depending on the particular machine, but this document can be considered an overall guide for upgrade routes.

Hardware

This first section will focus on hardware upgrades and justify why they have been suggested.

The first part I would suggest upgrading would be the RAM. The amount installed in the computer is relatively low, 768 MB is currently installed, enough to meet the minimum requirements of most software but far below the recommended. RAM is very inexpensive and it is quick and easy to fit; the motherboard is capable of holding up to 4 GB in total, but this much would not be necessary. An increase to 2 GB would greatly improve the overall performance without a huge expense.

Data storage capacity was very restrictive; the computer had a 20 GB hard drive. This might seem sufficient at first, but modern application can take up a lot of space and many people store videos and images on their hard drive now, before long a hard drive of that size will be full. There are 2 ways to overcome this problem, the first would be to use an external hard drive as extra storage, this would allow the drive, and the data stored on it, to be transported between different locations. Secondly adding an extra internal hard drive could be added, this would be take slightly longer as the computer would need to be opened up to gain access, but it is far from a complicated job. My recommendation would be to add an extra internal drive; the computer has the space available to do this and they are less expensive to buy than an equivalent external model and an internal drive cannot be physically lost once it has been fitted. The original hard drive could be kept, this has several advantages; firstly, it provides a small amount of extra storage space, and secondly it could be used as the location of the operating system, while all other data is stored on the new drive. This has an added advantage that if the operating system were to ever become corrupt, then in could be easily reinstalled without effecting and valuable data stored on the other drive. It is worth noting that in a commercial setting, computers often have access to central file storage, so a hard drive upgrade may not be necessary in all cases.

Upgrading the processor (CPU) is something that many consider to be a good way to improve performance. I feel CPU upgrades can offer huge gains in performance, in the right circumstances, but there are several issues to be aware of. Firstly not all motherboards can support an upgraded CPU, even if the CPU will physically fit, the motherboards firmware may not support it. Secondly, the huge performance gains can come at a high price, even if the motherboard will support an upgrade, the price of a CPU alone can outweigh the performance gains. The CPU currently installed in the computer I was working on is a single core model, if and upgrade is to be done I would recommend fitting a lower end dual core model. A dual core CPU would not necessarily run applications any faster but they are capable of running multiple applications at the same time. These are comparatively inexpensive and will give the best performance gains per amount spent.

The computer is currently using the motherboards built in graphics adaptor. If upgrading the CPU is not an option at this time, the addition of a dedicated graphics display adaptor card (GPU) could provide some benefit. The current setup requires some of the CPUs processing power for the graphics display, adding a dedicated GPU would free up some of the resources and allow it to concentrate on other jobs. Good quality GPU expansion cards cost very little and no modifications to the computer would have to be made in order to fit it.

Software

Once the hardware has been upgraded, more options for upgrading the software become available. Many newer software applications would not have been able to run on the machine as it was.

Firstly the operating system could be upgraded; the machine currently has Windows XP installed, it would be beneficial to upgrade this to Windows 7; XP is now over twelve years old and support is to be withdrawn in the very near future. The computer had no office application software installed, so the addition of Microsoft Office 2010 would make the computer more versatile in the workplace. The Client (Darlington College) has both Windows 7 and Office 2010 site licences, so the upgrade would simply be a case of installing the software; no additional costs would be incurred.

If the client chose to remain with the original operating system then the upgrade path would be limited to ensuring the software was fully up to date. Updates are regularly released for by Microsoft for their products; they address many issues, for example they might improve performance, introduce new features, make an application more stable or remove a potential security threat. Microsoft will often release service packs for their software; these service packs will contain all the updates that have been released up to that point in one go, service packs are also included with retail and OEM editions of the software from that point forward. Ensuring that a piece of software is fully up to date will not only improve its performance, but also make it safer.

Upgrading the security software is an area that must be considered for all computers. Installing anti-virus software will allow the computer to be used safely online and a firewall will reduce the chance of malware entering a machine or network. Ensuring these are regularly updated is vital, especially in the case of the anti-virus software; new threats are appearing all the time and anti-virus databases can be updated as much as once every hour.

Other upgrades that might be considered will depend on the particular system and its intended use; generally speaking there are many software applications that can be used to improve the performance of the computer, 3^rd party defrag and disk clean tools are available, although it is often personal preference as to whether these are used in place of the versions included with most operating systems.