Knowing when to buy a new computer can be tricky unless a catastrophic event like a hard disk crash, someone steals your laptop, or a piano falls on your CPU, forces you into action. Since most people don’t really know when it’s time to replace their computer, they tend to accept its operating quirks and work around them far longer than they really should.

Of course, if you know a really good computer repair service, the technicians will tell you what the true condition of your machine is, but it will still help for you to observe behaviors which seem to be unusual or abnormal about your computer’s operation. Here are some warning signs that can help alert you to the fact it may be time to replace your old system. If you observe just one of these indicators, that may not be decisive on its own, but when you see several of these warning signs, it’s a pretty good bet that your computer is trying to tell you it’s ready for retirement.

New operating system won’t install

Years ago, most people used to stick with the operating system that was installed on the computer when they bought it, since new versions were only released every three or four years. Both Apple and Microsoft are now moving to the point where they release an operating system update on a near-annual basis, which is made available as a free download. When you can’t install the newest update on your machine, it’s a bad sign; however, sometimes there a workarounds.

Can’t run new apps and games

The requirements for new applications and video games are becoming greater all the time, and when you reach the point where you can’t run a lot of these on your machine, it’s time for some kind of upgrade.

Slow performance

This is probably most noticeable during boot-up time and when you have several tabs open at the same time. Granted, a good system cleaning may be all you need, but eventually even cleaning won’t help. Sometimes a Solid State Drive (SSD) or a memory upgrade can fix the slowness.

Running out of space and memory

Check on your available storage. How much hard drive space do you need? Do you have enough? Every once in a while, open file explorer and check it out. Also open task manager to see how much CPU and RAM is used up. If CPU usage is at 80% or greater, that could be a good sign that your computer’s hardware is close to being maxed out.

Can’t connect newer devices

This is one of the most tell-tale signs that your computer is aging. All new gadgets you want to try out simply don’t work when you try to connect them to your machine. For instance, when you try to hook up a brand-new 4K monitor to your system, and it looks like you need a new pair of glasses, that’s your computer shouting out ‘incompatibility’. It’s time to buy a new computer.

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Costs of laptops and desktops have plummeted as tablets and phones have become more powerful. We frequently see customers go out and get new laptops and computers way sooner than they
actually need to because of these low prices. The need for the latest and greatest technology, or impatience for slowness, and sometimes the lack of understanding of how to fix the problem, creates piles of old computer equipment that lay around the house. So customers are asking, “what should I do with my old laptop?”

Here are a few questions we normally ask to find out more about your old equipment.

1. What is the make and model? (this can easily be found on the lcd screen bezel or even the sticker on the bottom of the laptop.)
2. How old is the laptop?
3. What is the current operating system?(Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8, 10?)
4. Why did you stop using it?
5. Can you find a purpose for it?

After hearing the answers to those questions, our response is almost always the same; “breathe new life into it!” If your old laptop is running Microsoft Vista or newer, it’s well worth the money to find a purpose for it and then refurbish it for use. If your laptop is running Windows XP, you might not want to bother with it; however, this depends on you.

What’s the Purpose?

First, find a purpose for the old laptop or desktop computer. Here are some ideas to get you started.

1. Donate it to someone.
2. Sell it.
3. Let the kids use it.
4. Use it for road trips or while working in the garage.
5. Use it for surfing the internet and/or streaming media anywhere.
6. Strip it for parts.
7. Get creative and turn it into something useful.

If there is no purpose and you just want to throw it away or recycle it, then be sure to remove the hard drive first. Leaving the hard drive in the computer you are about to recycle leaves your personal data vulnerable even if you think you did a good job erasing it all. We can manage this for you. Simply drop off the computer at any of our drop off locations and we’ll securely destroy the information, and then donate/recycle/dispose of computer for you at no cost.

Moving on, let’s say you want to repurpose it, give it to a friend, or just want to start using it again. Here are the upgrades worth investing in to breathe new life into that old laptop.

Hard Drive

First, let’s talk about the hard drive. Hard drives typically last 5 years and then they start slowing down and/or failing. Replacing your old hard drive is an absolute must if you want to speed up your old laptop. Go solid state. Solid State hard drives typically range from $60-$175 depending on how much storage you actually need and want on your old laptop. Keep in mind this old laptop is being repurposed and you won’t likely need a whole lot of storage space unless you are going to turn it into a media server. Go with a Samsung Evo 850 250GB or higher. If you know you will not put any personal data on it, you might want to go even cheaper with a 120GB Solid State drive. A hard drive upgrade will be the single greatest upgrade for your old laptop. You should see a 40% – 70% increase in performance compared to when the laptop was brand new. Boot up should take a matter of seconds and you will see positive and instant results. It may even have you questioning, “did I need to buy a new laptop in the first place?”

Operating System

Many agree that Microsoft seems to release Windows operating systems in a good-then-bad-then-good again pattern. For example:

Windows 98 = Good
Windows Millennium (ME) = Bad
Windows XP = Good
Vista = Bad
Windows 7 = Good
Windows 8 = Bad
Windows 10 = Good

Now, even though we think Microsoft Vista is old and terrible, we don’t believe it is as bad as it used to be. Vista has gotten much better over the years. Vista will be just fine for web surfing, streaming, and general typing applications, etc. For a backup machine or a repurposed laptop, save money and keep Vista. Vista will do what you need it to do and it will save you a little extra money without having to buy a Windows 7 or higher. If you really want to do it right then do yourself and the world a favor and help end the life of Microsoft Vista. Order a legit copy of Windows 7 and then attempt to upgrade to Windows 10 for free. This can be done for ~$130.

Once you install Windows 7 with the new media and license key on the new solid state hard drive, be sure to run all Windows 7 updates and then try to run the Windows 10 upgrade. The upgrade process will tell you right away if your old hardware is compatible with Window 10 or not. If not, at least you are at Windows 7. If so, then great, you just upgraded to Windows 10.

Keep in mind, all operating systems have an end of life date assigned. End of life means Microsoft will no longer support your operating system by releasing security hole patches. See chart below, Vista is supported until April 2017; however, it is possible they could extend a year or 2. My guess is Microsoft won’t extend because they know how terrible Vista was and not many businesses adopted it.

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Oldie but Goodie – Asus G72Gx Gaming Laptop Repair

A couple weeks ago we received a gaming laptop that definitely had seen better days and needed multiple repairs. The Asus G72Gx originally came with a 17″ in LCD screen, 1GB of dedicated graphic memory, 500GB hard drive, and 6GB of RAM. This was clearly designed for gaming use and is still a decent laptop today. Why not repair it, right?!

Our friend Daniel, brought us the laptop after it accidentally dropped out of a parked vehicle. Fortunately, he had insurance on it. We worked with the insurance company to justify the time and materials required for the repair and it was at very little cost to him. This laptop had so many things wrong with it, probably more than we have ever seen on a single device within the last 10+ years  that we’ve been in business.

It’s easier to ask, “What is working?!”

1. The LCD screen was only showing black and gray; however, the attached external monitors worked fine.
2. The laptop would not completely boot and sometimes froze at the windows boot logo.
3. The Keyboard back-light was intermittent and sometimes wouldn’t register that keys were being pressed.
4. The exterior had cracks in the plastic, mainly the bottom case and screen bezel. This was strictly cosmetics though.
5. WiFi was not working. The laptop knew the card was attached but the radio would not enable.
6. DVD burner was not working. Again, Windows knew the drive was there; however, CD’s and DVD media could not be read or written.
7. The battery would not keep a charge.

The repairs.

We ordered the parts needed to get the laptop back up and running. The first problem was the screen. If a laptop doesn’t have a working screen, what is the point of having a laptop? So, we ordered the following parts right away:

1. LCD panel and bezel
2. Bottom case/cover.
3. Battery
4. DVD Burner.
5. 500GB Solid State Hard Drive.

Once we swapped the LCD panel and bezel we could then see what was going on with the boot up process without having to use an external monitor. The bottom case swap fixed the gaps in between palm rest and bottom case. The battery swap kept the device mobile since it would now keep a charge. We put in a 500GB Solid State Hard Drive in addition to his 500GB spindle drive; now he had 1TB of hard drive space to work with.

Asus G72Gx Gaming Laptop Repair Woes…

Once booted, we determined that it was best to go ahead and do a clean install of Windows 8.1. Everything was going fine until we updated the BIOS using Asus’s update tool in Windows. The bios is a a set of computer instructions in a firmware that control input and output and if it goes wrong the laptop becomes a brick. This is the first time in 10+ years of updating BIOS’s that we actually witnessed a no boot failure after an updating. Short version of the story, we ended up ordered a new motherboard for him. The BIOS update on the new motherboard went perfectly, phew! 

Once the new motherboard was in, we were back in business. We finished up all the Windows 8.1 update and a couple days later, Windows 10 was released. The Windows 10 update was simple and quick and fixed some other weird operating system issues.

Upgrades

We upgraded a few things to bring the laptop up to date. First, a brand new SSD. The solid state hard drive (SSD), is the best upgrade anyone can pay for. We’ve been turning 5-7 year old laptop into scream machines. This laptop allows two internal drives so we installed the Samsung 850 Evo SSD as his primary drive that has the operating system (Windows 10), his applications, and primary data on it. The 500GB spindle drive was installed in the secondary slot and can now be used for data that is not frequently accessed or even as a backup drive. This is the best setup for high performance. We also upgraded him to Windows 10 from Windows 8.1. I guarantee this laptop is at least 30% faster than the first day he got it.

It’s was great to see this shamble of a system go through repairs to become such a great computer again.

Now then, what could be so wrong with your laptop? Our laptop repair is $150 flat rate + at cost parts; love your laptop again!

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HP Pavilion 500 Virus Removal

This week we worked on an HP Pavilion 500 with a massive amount of viruses and spyware, 504 to be precise. The system desperately needed virus removal services. The customer didn’t have time to drop it off with us; we offered our remote services instead. We used our tools to remote control the computer without him even having to leave the house. We used our remote control tool to connect over the internet to repair the PC. We also used our various tools and expertise for the virus removal and optimization of his PC. We corrected registry issues, removed viruses, removed spyware, optimized the PC, and installed protection tools for prevention.

Our customer mentioned that the issue has been going on for months. We found the reason; his antivirus had been expired since 2014.  He computer is running very quickly now and is malware free. He is one happy customer and wishes he would have come to us sooner.

The only thing that would make this system faster is a Solid State Hard Drive. He already has plenty of RAM with a decent processor; the bottleneck here is his hard drive.

Every computer that comes through our doors comes with Virus Removal and Optimization. We don’t just fix the problem, we do much more than what you ask us to do.

Is your AntiVirus solutions and up to date? Ask us if are unsure and we’ll help get you protected.

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