Is Your PC Acting Its Age?

Entrepreneur, June, 2000 by Mike Hogan

If the thought of trashing your old PC makes you sick, an upgrade might be the way to go.

How long have you had your refrigerator or your washer and dryer? These appliances run forever and only get replaced when you have kids, change your dec[acute{o}]r or get lassoed by a sharp Sears & Roebuck salesperson some Sunday afternoon.

But your office PCs? That's another story. Recent IDC research shows that midrange PCs now become obsolete after little more than two years of service. (You can probably get $200 for a typical business desktop--a 350MHz Pentium II PC with 64MB RAM and a 6.4GB hard drive bought for $1,840 two years ago.) The irony is that the average desktop is as sound as any piece of equipment for the home or office.

In fact, with solidstate technology and few moving parts, your PC is more reliable than most, and it should run flawlessly into the next millennium, as long as you don't attempt something crazy like installing new software. But, you will, of course--and as you start loading new versions of Microsoft Windows, Internet Explorer, etc., your PC will crawl. And as we all know, a slow PC wastes your time--and we all know the old saying about time.

This is not news. The question is: How do you squeeze the most value from your PCs? If you plan to trade up, don't forget that there's a cost for disposing of the current one--$272 to $397 by IDC's estimate, depending on whether you sell it, hand it down, or give it to charity. Start with the fixed cost of taking it off the desktop; scrubbing the hard drive of passwords and company files; uninstalling software, peripherals and network components; and cleaning, testing and repairing it. Then, you'll spend another $1,000 to $1,200 for a midrange business PC replacement.

Which leads to your third option: How much will it cost you to upgrade that "old" desktop to an acceptable level? The quick answer is: a lot less.

RUN THE NUMBERS

It's been a long, winding road for Intel's Pentium and the AMD and Cyrix work-alike chips. Ironically, you're more likely to have trouble with certain models from the largest PC makers--the Compaqs, Hewlett-Packards and Gateways--than your average no-name clone, because the big guys customize systems to make them "better" than industry standards.

If you have a well-behaved system, you can easily snap in a new processor in as little as 15 minutes. But we found that it can take another hour or two if you have to download a BIOS upgrade from your vendor's Web site or troubleshoot an incompatibile device driver. Don't blame the CPU upgrade companies; there are simply way too many not-quite-compatible PC variations out there.

Because of this, none of the upgrade companies provide a solution for every Pentium. To find a match, you must check the compatibility lists on their Web sites or download their compatibility test programs. Not a big deal, but it takes time. You have the widest range of upgrade solutions if your processor is on a Socket 5 or 7 motherboard. Typical vendors offer at least two different upgrades for each Intel-, Cyrix- and AMD-based system. Installation is as simple as lifting the ZIF (zero insertion force) lever and replacing the old processor with a new one.

You won't have to do much more than that with Evergreen's Spectra 400, PowerLeap's PL-ProMMX-400 or Kingston's TurboChip 400. They upgrade AMD, Cyrix and Intel systems with Socket 5/Socket 7 motherboards to AMD's 400MHz K6-2 and add the MMX and 3DNow! multimedia instruction sets. All sell for around $199 (street).

If your system already has an AMD processor, you can get more processing power out of PowerLeap's PL-K6-III/400, which includes AMD's 400MHz K6-III and MMX and 3DNow! multimedia instruction sets for about $200 (street). Its on-chip 256KB cache makes it the fastest alternative available for AMD K5, K6 or K6-2 systems. It also fits other Socket 5/Socket 7 Cyrix and Intel systems at slightly lower speeds.

What if yours is one of the troublesome 75MHz to 200MHz Pentium-compatible brands? In that case, you might settle for a compatible 233MHz Intel Pentium processor with MMX. Evergreen's Spectra 233, Kingston's TurboChip 233 as well as PowerLeap's PL ProMMX-233 all sell for the street price of $140.

These products aren't suitable for Pentium IIs or Pros. For 233MHz and faster Pentium II PCs with Slot 1 motherboards, Evergreen has the Performa 500 and Performa 400, which add a 500MHz or 400MHz Intel Celeron processor for street prices of $229 and $99, respectively. PowerLeap has a solution, priced at $220 (street)--the PL PII with a 533MHz Celeron.

PowerLeap is the only manufacturer with a solution for Pentium Pro systems with the Socket 8 motherboards. There are not a lot of Pentium Pro clients out there, but many Pentium Pro servers are still in service. PowerLeap's PL-Pro/II will bring that 200MHz dinosaur all the way up to 533MHz with an Intel Celeron processor for $279 (street).

Another approach for all but Pentium Pro PCs is Evergreen Technologies' AcceleraPCI. Basically, it's a new PC on a PCI add-in board with a new BIOS, 66MHz frontside bus, 64MB RAM (upgradable to 256MB) and an Intel Celeron processor. You can choose from a 400MHz and a 466MHz Celeron for between $349 and $399.