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[ Can a Computer Die of Old Age? ]

Posted on: Thursday, 12 January 2006, 15:00 CST

Can a computer die of old age?

The question, in the subject line of an e-mail, brought a chuckle. But the writer was quite serious. He had a PC that was well into its fifth year, and for some months now it had been slowing down.

His original processor, once a muscleman, was overmatched by 7- megapixel digital photos and graphics-heavy Web pages. His once copious 20-gigabyte hard drive was full and badly fragmented which slowed his system even more. On top of that, years of installing and removing software had left his Windows registry a bloated, gloppy mess.

As a result, the computer crawled through everyday tasks. And from time to time, it generated strange error messages, then crashed completely.

Given those symptoms, he asked, was his computer likely to give up the ghost completely one day? And, assuming he didnt want to wait for that unhappy event, should he spend money to upgrade the machine or just buy a new one?

Good questions. I dont have hard data on this, but I seem to be running into a lot of folks who are pondering the ultimate mortality of what I like to call the first generation of long-lasting computers.

These are generally Windows 98 or Windows ME machines that had enough original horsepower to handle modern Word processing, spreadsheet, Web browsing and e-mail software, along with new generations of programs such as photo editors and music players.

With their well-engineered Pentium III processors, they didnt turn obsolete two years after they were purchased, and most turned into solid, reliable performers that have never had a chance to gather dust. As one colleague described her machine, The kids would use it every day till it was time to go to bed, and then it was the adults turn to use it for work. It got a lot of wear and tear.

Many of these computers are still running just fine. At The Baltimore Sun, we publish every day using PCs that date well back into the Clinton administration. True, I spend a lot of time waiting for my computer to do things, such as display Web pages or switch from one program to another. But eventually it gets the job done.

Now heres the weird thing: theres a brand new PC sitting next to the old one. I got an early peek to check out software compatibility before we all get new machines over the next few months. The new one is a lot faster but somehow not enough to overcome my own inertia about moving my files from the old PC.

As long as the old one still works, I can keep putting it off. Which is how a lot of people feel about their own middle-aged computers.

Unfortunately, even the best computers eventually reach the end of the road. Some wear out physically the hard drives start to fail, or motherboard components give up the ghost.

Others need more memory or hard disk space to keep up with the demands of the latest software and they may not have the processing power to run the hungriest programs at all.

The sheer number and variety of attacks on networked computers also force us to run ever-more sophisticated virus checkers, spyware eliminators and firewall programs. None of these programs does anything affirmatively useful they merely protect us from the bad guys, and use a lot of processing power in the background. Machines built five or six years ago werent designed for that much overhead.

Users who dont take these precautions have their own set of problems the worst being machines that have been crippled by adware and spyware (a common affliction in households with teenagers). Even without these assaults, Windows itself slows down over time, thanks in part to problems that develop with the registry the database of critical system settings that can charitably be described as self- corrupting.

All of these issues make it hard to diagnose any particular case of what we might delicately call approaching computer death, or ACD for short.

You can indeed treat ACDs symptoms. For example, cleaning up unused files from a nearly full hard drive and running defragmenting software can speed up a slow computer. A variety of utility programs (such as Norton Systemworks) can handle these chores and repair your Windows registry, too.

Physically, you can boost an old computers memory to 256 or 512 megabytes of RAM a cheap and effective fix in many cases. More memory lets you run more programs simultaneously without using your hard drive for spillover, which gives security programs some breathing room. Hard drives are much slower at moving data than the pure silicon of memory chips, and $50 to $100 worth of RAM can work wonders.

You also can add a second hard drive if youre running out of space to store photos, music, video and other goodies. In addition to generating errors, a full drive can slow your computer down as the operating system hunts for space to store routine system data. Internal hard drives with capacities of 80 to 120 megabytes are available for well under $100.

But before you spend money, consider Moores Law and its corollary, the Wal-Mart rule.

Gordon Moore, the founder of Intel, famously predicted that the number of transistors engineers can squeeze onto a wafer of silicon will double every 18 months or so. And hes been right so far.

In real terms, it means that the computer you buy today is six to eight times more powerful than a PC that cost the same amount five years ago.

The Wal-Mart Corollary to Moores Law states that for $400 or thereabouts, a big-box retailer will sell you a bottom-of-the-line computer thats a lot faster and more powerful than your five-year- old machine ever was or will ever be, no matter how much you spend on it.

If your computer needs a new hard drive and additional memory and youre not handy enough to do it yourself its easy to spend $250 to $300 before you know it. At the best, youll be extending its life another year or so.

Compare that to what youll pay for a new computer and its easy to justify the additional money to buy a shiny new PC to replace the old one.

And if your spouse doesnt believe you, just tell him/her that I said it was true. Sometimes that works.

Mike Himowitz is a syndicated columnist. He can be contacted in care of the Los Angeles-Washington Post News Service, 1150 15th St. N.W., Washington, D.C., 20071. His e-mail address is mike.himowitzbaltsun.com.

Source: Advocate; Baton Rouge, La.

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