Should I Upgrade My Laptop or Buy a New One?

“We used to have boxes of photos in our closets. Now, it’s just old computers. ‘Heh, there’s our wedding computer.’” 

-Jim Gaffigan

Modern laptop commercials would have you believe that your current laptop is a laggy, unsecured bandwidth hog in need of replacement. Oddly enough, like a car, laptop computers are no more than a collection of components. And like cars, they’re likely upgradeable. 

Let’s look at what parts of your laptop you can upgrade to give you a few more years before forking over hundreds, if not thousands of dollars on a new model.  

When to Replace Your Hard Drive

Sadly, hard drives are not immortal. Because many have physically spinning components, they may wear out — leaving your data lost forever. If your computer is slowing down, routinely freezing up, or throws up warnings about corrupted data and bad sectors, it may be time to replace the hard drive. Computer repair professionals can help you safely transfer data to another hard drive for safekeeping. 

When to Upgrade Your RAM

If your laptop is running slower than usual, it may be time for a RAM upgrade. Still, this isn’t always the case. If your computer has 16GB of RAM or more and your computer is still running slow, there may be other reasons for the drop in speed. Still, if your RAM is below this level and you’re needing your computer to process memory-intensive commands (gaming, audio/visual editing, etc.), a good boost of RAM may be a relatively inexpensive shot in the arm. 

When to Replace or Upgrade Your Battery

Batteries are one of the components of your laptop (or mobile device) that degrade over time. No battery holds the same charge as it did years later. If your laptop doesn’t seem to be able to remain off of the charger very long, instead of ditching it for a totally new system, a simple battery upgrade may be just the ticket. And lucky for you, many laptop models don’t even require any tools to replace a laptop battery. 

When to Replace Your Laptop Keyboard or Trackpad

We all have that friend with the ancient laptop who can’t type certain letters or symbols. But there’s no reason to put up with that. Many laptops are designed to allow for interchangeable keyboards by computer repair professionals. In many instances, a keyboard can be successfully switched out and extend the life of the laptop for many more years. Still, before this is done, an external keyboard should be tried with your laptop to ensure that the issue is, indeed, your keyboard. Motherboard issues can present themselves much like laptop keyboard malfunctions. 

In Conclusion

Before you ditch your laptop and shell out some major coin for a brand new model, it’s worth having it looked over by a computer repair professional. In many instances, annoying glitches may be due to replaceable or upgradeable components. At best, you may be looking at a few inexpensive repairs. At worse, if it’s not repairable, the computer technician will be able to give you some pointers on what devices may best fit your needs and budget — saving you time and money in the future. 

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