QuickTip – When to upgrade your laptop

There are lots of reasons we chose to upgrade our laptops, or even swap them for desktop PCs. The following may assist with your decision process.

The life-span of a laptop is roughly between 2-3 years, compared to PCs that typically last for 3-4 years. If you’ve discovered new ways to be mobile and your laptop rarely leaves your desk, purchasing a PC instead of a new laptop is a cheaper option that may provide better performance - superior graphics, faster hard drives and better processor speed are all worth considering.

However, if you’re moving around a lot and your laptop is over 3 years old – the good news is that we’re now seeing new generation laptops that have longer battery life, faster performance and built in web-cams, as well as being much lighter.  Also, Windows 7 is much better at auto-detecting new locations and helping you through the process of hooking up wifi and other networks.  It’s still not quite as good as an iPhone, but far better than earlier versions of windows.

If you’re constantly adding new bits of software, add-ins and tools to an old laptop; you may find that performance is grinding to a slow crawl. You can have your laptop re-built, you can run de-frag and other optimisation tools, but it can be expensive and doesn't necessarily provide significant additional performance. Also - depending on how the laptop is being used - laptop batteries wear out after 1 or 2 years, so consider the additional cost of replacing the battery. Again, if it’s approaching 3 years old and you’re not happy with the performance, replace it - don’t rebuild it!

So, when replacing your laptop - although it may seem obvious - you do need to really think about what you use the laptop for.

Some things to consider:

The lighter you want it, the more expensive it will be and the smaller the screen size and the processing capacity Faster, higher performance laptops come with increased weight Do you need a docking station? How long a battery life? Will you need a second battery? Do you need smartcard readers and - if so, which ones? Do you want a lightweight power pack (oxymoron - but some are lighter than others!) When does the warrenty expire?

Another point, if you’re a “road warrior” – a laptop power user – I strongly recommend keeping some notes on how each of your favourite applications are configured, so that when they’re re-installed next time, you can replicate the way you like them.  Especially since by the time you replace the laptop, you will probably have a new/different operating system on it, so there’s typically no easy way to save or migrate the application settings for each of your applications.

• Know somebody who might benefit from our services? Refer a friend
• Have an IT question you'd like us to answer in the next issue of QuickTips? Email us

SUBSCRIBE