Quote:
Originally Posted by Mirth
Reformatting a 3-5 year old computer will help at first because it's fresh and starting from a clean slate again, like it was when you got it, but that's because it doesn't have what was on it before the reformat. Once the user starts to reinstall the programs that they normally use, services are added and automatically start upon boot, as well as programs running in the background (ex: antivirus), which can slow down the computer once they are all piled up again. And also, programs nowadays eat up so much more memory, so unless the user is using all outdated programs from 2005 and such, things are going to be slow again for them in a short amount of time.
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Not really. Any PC with 512 MB of RAM or more can be made as fast as a $5,000 PC today regardless of CPU, RAM quantity, or videocard. An older PC with 1 GB of RAM (still common in 3-5 year old PCs depending on who bought it) is impossible to detect from a brand new computer. If your PC is slow and it has 512 MB of ram or more then it is simply the user not knowing what they're doing. More RAM and a faster CPU can help cover up bloatware and user ignorance but any PC with 512 MB to 1 GB of RAM can be made lightning fast for as long as you want.
Quote:
Originally Posted by filtherton
Yeah, you can get a pretty nice computer for $1000 these days.
It's just as likely someone on an old computer would benefit more from a RAM upgrade than a formatting.
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Negative. More RAM is sweeping dust under the rug. It will help short-term but a reformat will fix
everything and for any duration you need it to.
Quote:
Originally Posted by shakran
That said, a 3-5 year old pc is not going to be as fast as a current $1,000 PC. . . Especially with PC prices meaning you can build a $1,000 gaming rig that will handle any new software you throw at it.
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A 3-5 year old PC can and will be as fast as a $5,000 PC bought today.
Of course PC gaming doesn't count in any of this but that's not what I meant in my OP anyway.
Sorry to nitpick but 50% of my current job is tweaking and constructing Windows images from scratch and I know how to make an old PC run fast and stay fast.
PS: Windows Vista obviously changes some things since it won't even run on less than 1 GB of RAM. But most people are still running XP so that is what this applies to.