It’s a sad fact of life that over time, all of our computers get a little bit slower. Before you start shelling out for a new machine, take some time this weekend to perform some maintenance tasks, upgrade a single piece of hardware, or even overclock your machine for a little speed boost.
Do Some Maintenance
Before you start mucking with your hardware, it’s a good idea to perform a bit of maintenance and make sure it isn’t just bad software and cruft that’s slowing your machine down. If you’re using a Windows machine, you’ll have quite a few things to do: keep it updated, run your antivirus software, clean temporary files, and uninstall any apps you don’t want. Remember, too, that you shouldn’t have to reinstall Windows regularly—if your computer has slowed down, it’s most likely due to crappy apps, so you should make sure you uninstall anything fishy. And of course, any program marketed as something that will speed up your computer—with a few exceptions—is likely garbage (though you can speed up your boot time with some pretty handy tricks). Lastly, take a good look at your web browser. You can probably uninstall some of those add-ons, change your DNS servers, and update your plugins to give it a nice speed boost.