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I often hear the phrase (from people seeking tech support with their windows machine) "My computer has gotten slow." And I'd say about 2% of the time they are right. About that often the machine is overheating and the processor is actually smart enough to slow down it's rate of calculations and heat producing electric consumption. But the common case is that their machine isn't any slower, it's just a lot less responsive to what they want it to do. You see, that's the funny thing. A computer you buy today will run just as fast as it does now until it dies, probably 5 years from now. Computers don't get slower, like cars, they keep going until they stop. What is really happening when people experience their computers getting slower is not that the hardware is doing less, but that the software is doing less and less useful stuff. Your computer isn't slow, it's actually quite fast, it's just no longer responsive to you. This happens over time as you install things that add their own overhead to everything the computer does, or it can happen quite suddenly when a virus multiplies on your computer and gives you the same effect in a matter of hours or minutes. So remember that. Your computer doesn't get slower, if it's doing less of what you want, it's likely doing a great deal of work for somebody else. Viruses aren't the only cause of "computer slowdown," you also seem to watch your computer get slower as you install newer software. This is expected, though how reasonable it is remains a point of debate among software engineers. The two opposing viewpoints go like this: 1. Computers are faster, so they should do more of the work for the programmer as well as the user, and provide more features and options. Using this methodology I can write a good program in half the time that supplies more customer requested features than if I did things the old way. 2. Software is smarter, therefore I can get the computer helping me to write the code to give people the same functionality as a $2000 package in a package half that price. The old package really got the job done, and the way to make things better is make that package available to more people. All software development hedges its bets between these two camps, but some projects very obviously lean hard to one side or the other. Microsoft in general leans toward option 1, the free software movement (gnu / linux) tends to lean towards option 2. Both points are valid, and pushing to achieve both has brought us a wonderful and diverse computing environment. So just remember, as your computer gets older, it will seem to run more slowly, and this is to be expected. If you choose your software carefully and perform computer maintenance diligently, your computer could actually serve you better as it gets older than it does right now, no new hardware required. But if you are taking care of your computer (or at least not abusing it) and it becomes a lot slower very suddenly, then it is likely doing something, not just wrong, but bad. Or at least doing a lot of work for bad reasons. That's when it's time to back up your data, and wipe out the entire machine, and start putting on only the software that will help you do your job better and faster. Computers are still fragile, and if you don't have the skills, time, or desire to be able to do wipe and rebuild; Then you should make sure you know someone who can and will do this job for you when (not if) the need arises. |