Often clients, friends, associates, ask what should they get to replace their old desktop, or laptop. This is a common and reasonable question I come across quite often.  It is not difficult to answer. My immediate thoughts would be to explore the needs required for the use of the computer. If it is only for browsing the Web and read e-mail, then the answer would be try to improve the performance of the computer; by cleaning it's accumulated clutter, possibly hundreds of spyware and malware, (eating up most of your precious computer resources), defragmenting the memory, defragmenting the hard drive, optimising windows, checking for disk errors and damaged clusters, optimising the registry and backing it up.  If this is not enough to boost the performance, then by all means increase the physical memory as well. This action will definitely create a faster computer to work with and in my opinion would be enough to handle the Internet browsing and emailing tasks without breaking your pocket.

On the other hand, if a new computer is necessary sometimes the choice can be daunting when there are so many different types of computers namely, tablets, laptops and desktops and not to mention the other class of hand held computers. 

A tablet can quite efficiently and inexpensively replace a laptop if the intended tasks are light, such as Internet browsing or emailing. However if more serious work is intended then Laptop would be a smarter choice. For more serious work such as graphic designing, video editing, gaming etc, a desktop will be definitely the right choice.

The new operating systems are pretty heavy and need lot of RAM and disk space. Add to that other applications, such Internet security software, and other heavy duty programs, anything less than 4GB physical RAM and your system will run like molasses. Many "door buster" laptops will have only 2GB of RAM, and that's just not enough.

The minimum RAM should not be less than 4 GB and hard drive capacity should not be less 500 GB. The new computers come with new technology processors. Duel core or more would be a smart choice.  

I would love to hear your questions, comments and recommendations as to what is needed for you to know about Information Technology. For any new tech product you are contemplating to buy please check my site: http://www.onlineproductsshopping.com

To know more about me check my site below:

Ed Tower
nscs@cogeco.ca
http://www.niagaracomputerservices.ca