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Rick’s Tech Tips Newsletter
There comes a time when every computer owner realizes that their current computer just isn’t up to the task of working with the latest hardware and software.
When we reach that conclusion we must inevitably make a choice between upgrading and buying a new computer.
In my opinion there are only five possible upgrades that really make sense given the historically low prices of new computers these days: [Read more…]
Question from Oliver: I just read your article about replacing a hard drive with an SSD and I have a question about it.
I remember hearing that upgrading the graphics card in a computer can sometimes require a power supply upgrade as well because the newer graphics card will draw more power than the old one.
My question is do I need to be concerned about the power supply if I replace the hard drive in my computer with an SSD?
Question from Larry: I read your post explaining the advantages of installing an SSD a while back and I’ve wanted one ever since to go in my HP desktop PC.
I ended up buying a 120GB SSD (I got it for $20!) and installed it as the boot drive in my HP desktop computer. I left the 750GB hard drive in there for extra storage.
I installed Windows 10 from scratch on the SSD and now I’m ready to install my programs. The thing is with only 120GB of space on the SSD it won’t hold anywhere near all of my programs.
I have a couple of questions for you:
1 – Which programs should I install on the SSD and which ones should I leave on the hard drive?
2 – Should I leave the original Windows 10 files on the hard drive or is it safe to delete them to free up that space?
Thanks in advance for your help.
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
Question from Paul: I have a custom built gaming PC that I bought in January 2014. It came with Windows 8.1 on it.
I then updated the machine to Windows 10 while Microsoft was allowing the upgrade for free.
Now I’d like to upgrade the machine itself by installing a new, more powerful motherboard.
My question is will I be able to reinstall Windows 10 and have it activate after replacing the motherboard? [Read more…]
Question from Andy S.: My Dell Inspiron 1300 has only 512 Megs of RAM. The machine is now very slow, I suspect that it’s due to lot of paging.
Would it make sense if I buy an Expresscard to USB 3.0 adapter so then I can add a USB 3.0 SSD, Flash Finger or M.2 to the machine? Would it improve the performance?
Thank you very much.
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]