Do you need a new computer and, if so, what to do with the old one.

The first distinction to make here is the difference between “want” and “need”. If you can’t stand to keep looking at the computer you have and you want to have something new, shiny or super-fast, then skip to the part about “What to do with your old computer”. On the other hand, if there is a problem with your computer that is making you consider a replacement, read on.

What don’t you like about your computer?

The complaints I hear and read about most often are

1. It’s gotten slow.

If your computer is otherwise OK, meaning that the screen is sharp and clear and the keyboard still feels comfortable and responsive, there are a few simple things that can be done to improve the speed of an older computer.

 Add RAM (memory). I encourage you to read the “Optional but recommended tech talk” below 
to understand why adding RAM can speed up a computer.

 Upgrade your hard drive. Drives continue to get both faster and cheaper. The best option is to 
upgrade to a Solid-State Drive (SSD) which has no moving parts and is wildly faster than a 
conventional drive. Startup time for my laptop went from 2 ½ minutes to 25 seconds when I 
made the switch. Also, see the section “Wipe the drive” below.

 Eliminate clutter. Windows and many other programs are terrible housekeepers. They create a 
lot of temporary files in the course of normal operation but do a lousy job of cleaning up when 
those files are no longer needed. There are several free programs that remove them and other
kinds of junk. Also, uninstalling programs that you don’t use can speed up your computer.

2. “It’s gotten noisy” or “It gets hot”.

There are only a few moving parts in most computers: Conventional hard drives and fans. Remedies for “noisy” and “hot” computers are

 Replace a noisy hard drive before it fails. A noisy hard drive is always bad news. If it hasn’t 
failed yet, it will. Guaranteed. It should be replaced ASAP. Consider an SSD (see above)

 Lubricate or replace noisy fans. Heat is the enemy of computers. Fans with dry bushings can
squeak, slow down or even stop spinning. In all cases, they let heat build up. They can go for 
years without requiring attention and when they do, a single, small drop of light oil can extend 
that life for many more years. When they are too far gone to fix with oil, they are cheap and 
easy to replace.

 Blow out accumulated dust. Even if fans are working OK, they can’t overcome blockage
caused by tightly packed dust.

3. “It shuts down without warning”.

Because heat is so bad for computers, they have a number of sensors on board to detect when 
things get too hot. When that happens, they may respond in several ways. The microprocessor (the 
actual “brain” of the computer) may actually slow down to reduce the amount of heat it generates. If 
that doesn’t provide enough relief, the computer will simply shut down before it is damaged. This is 
referred to as a thermal shutdown and is a purely protective measure. The fixes are the same as above:

 Lubricate or replace fans

 Blow out dust

Optional but recommended: some tech talk. Useful whether you shop for a new computer or upgrade your existing device.

Brace yourself for a little technical talk. I promise to keep it understandable.  You’ve may possibly have heard the terms “bit”, “byte”, “kilobyte”, “megabyte”, “gigabyte” and, perhaps “terabyte”. Don’t panic. The concept is simple. Computers, for all of their remarkable complexity, really only recognize two things, a one or a zero (technically, high or low voltage but let’s not get technical).

A “bit” is a tiny slice of data containing either a zero or a one. A “byte” is a group of 8 bits. Think of a byte as a single keypress on your keyboard. Every key, whether it is a letter, number, character or special key sends 8 bits (or one byte) to the computer. Having 8 bits in a byte means that we can have 256 different combinations of ones and zeros. That’s enough to represent all of the upper case letters, lower case letters, numbers, function keys and special characters (space, esc, arrows, tab ! @ # $ % ^ & * ( ) _ - + = | \ } ] { [) on your keyboard with enough combinations left over for a more than a hundred graphics (picture) characters.

If you filled an 8 ½ X 11 sheet of paper with characters and left no blank lines, you’d have 4800 bytes on the page. After a few pages, the numbers get pretty large so, to keep the numbers manageable, we combine bytes into larger units.  1000 bytes (technically, 1024 bytes but we’re not getting technical) is a kilobyte (KB - a thousand bytes – a one followed by three zeros).

A thousand kilobytes is a megabyte (MB - a million bytes - a one followed by six zeros),

A thousand megabytes is a gigabyte ( GB - a billion bytes – a one followed by nine zeros)

and a thousand gigabytes is a terabyte (TB -a trillion bytes – a one followed by twelve zeros). 

The reason that a discussion of bytes, kilobytes, gigabytes etc. is important is that we use those numbers to define storage space and memory and that takes us to dealing with complaint number one, a slow computer.

When Windows 10 first came out in 2015, Microsoft recommended that you have at least one GB of memory (also called RAM or Random Access Memory) available in order for it to run. After a few years of updates, Windows got bigger and Microsoft began recommending 4 GB. After nine years of updates, Microsoft and most experts, recommend 8GB as a minimum and encourage 16GB for a smooth-running computer. Personally, most of my computers have 32GB of memory installed.

How more RAM helps speed up your computer.

It helps to think of RAM (memory) as a tabletop and your hard drive as a filing cabinet. The size of the tabletop determines how large a project (or how many small projects) you can work on without having to go the filing cabinet to get more stuff. If your tabletop gets full and you need more data for your project then you have to clear off some space, put that data back in the filing cabinet and fetch more data. This takes time.

In a computer, this also takes a little time. It has to gather up data you can do without for a while, store it in a special place on the hard drive and then retrieve the new data. If you need the original data again, the process is repeated. Having more RAM reduces the need for “swapping” and saves the computer from having to wait for the hard drive.

You want a new computer. What do you do with the old one?

Please, do not toss it into the trash or even the recycling bin.

Computers, like most appliances today, are made of mostly plastic and metal. However, if you’ve ever peaked inside any electronic device, you’ve no doubt seen a green (sometimes blue or red) board with a lot of tiny parts stuck onto it. This is a printed circuit board (PCB). In a computer it’s called a“motherboard”. The manufacture of PCBs is a chemical process that uses some highly toxic materials that don’t belong in a land fill. PCBs are considered hazardous waste and should be treated as such.  So what are your choices?

 Send it to a recycling center. There are several in the Salt Lake area. Probably the most 
convenient are Staples and Best Buy. There may be a small fee but many are free.

 Donate it for use by needy families. TechCharities in downtown SLC refurbishes computers 
and either gives them or sells them at very low cost to people who need them. They also 
provide training services.

 Give them to my friend Sam. Sam is a highly functional autistic 18-year-old who loves 
computers. For several years I’ve been sending him computers which he, in turn, gives to 
friends who don’t have one.

Wipe the drive.

In all cases, before parting with your old computer and after moving all of your data and pictures to your new one, wipe the drive. That means completely zapping the contents. This is normally done with programs that overwrite every byte on the drive with random patterns of ones and zeros. Don’t just try to erase everything. It doesn’t work. When you erase something, the data is simply hidden from view until it gets overwritten and can be retrieved as easily as can files in the recycle bin.

Alternately, if your old computer has raised your frustration to a sufficiently high level, you can take a hammer or a drill to the drive. Although I’ve never tried it, I hear that this provides a great deal of satisfaction.

Help is available.

Part of the reason for starting this series of articles is to offer technical help to my Tabor family. There is no charge for time or advise and I am happy to provide both. I can add RAM, upgrade hard drives or SSDs, wipe old drives, lubricate or replace fans, provide software to remove clutter and evenremove drives so that you can hammer them. I can also diagnose other types of problems. If you’d like help. Please don’t hesitate to ask. h.heightman@tssutah.com

Next time, How to protect your computer and your data.