Where do you draw the line between speed and price for a new computer? While traditional, business laptops pack a lot of computing power for business applications, newer SSD-based technology, such as the MacBook and Surface families, are a lot, lot faster. They’re also a lot, lot more expensive. Here are some points to consider:
Cost – How much money do you really want to spend? The premium for speed and performance is considerable.
Patience or Impatience – In today’s on-demand world, many computer users are losing patience with their computer’s boot-up time, either when you power it up, restart it or awaken it from sleep mode. In some cases, your impatience can be justified. If you are making a sales presentation, for example, you just don’t want to waste time for your computer to go through its start-up routine, and you want to give the impression you and your technology are on top of your game.
You can manage the start-up time through Task Manager by deciding which applications to load, but that’s something you should do in advance of any presentations. Trying to do it seamlessly while standing in front of people you want to impress probably won’t come off as you’d like.
The difference between the technologies in start-up time can be a couple of interminable minutes, and patience may not be an option.
Physical – Consider a couple of physical points, especially if you will be traveling a lot with your computer. The MacBooks and Surfaces are a lot lighter than traditional laptops. Additionally, SSDs are much more resilient and better able to avoid damage if you drop your computer or if it gets jostled a little too vigorously.
Free Space on Drive – If you have a lot of free space on your hard drive, you may not need the faster SSD or MacBook just to improve performance. As we’ve pointed out, you need to leave room on your hard drive so that your applications have room to move files and do their work. Look at your drive’s capacity and at what you’re storing. Your hard drive should be a minimum of 256 GB, but 500 GB or 1 TB are much more realistic. If you need more space, you can always offload data files to the cloud. If you have a lot of free space and don’t anticipate needing a great deal of storage, you might not need the speed and performance – and expense – of SSD technology.
Flexibility – You don’t necessarily need to buy a new computer to get SSD technology. Depending on the age and RAM capacity of your existing computer, you could buy and install a new SSD hard drive, and that might a good investment to give you a performance boost for a year or two – maybe longer – if that’s what you need.
We are getting into the heavy buying season for electronics, so you can expect to see a lot of choices and price points. New products and ways to upgrade an existing computer will give you enough options to make your head spin. You can make your best decision after you gather all the facts, and that’s where we can help. Call us – 973-433-6676 – or email us to discuss your needs and budgets for now and for the next few years, and we can guide you to the best options.