Time to Give Up and Buy a New PC?

After going through this process to start fresh, are you still having significant problems that make you feel like it’s time to chuck the old PC and buy a new one?

Before you read on through my “Tips for Smart PC Buying,” consider calling in a professional (the topic of Chapter 18). If you think the hard drive itself is the issue, see Chapter 17. It’s always possible that the issues causing your problems can be corrected for a fraction of the cost of a new PC.

Tips for Smart PC Buying

If you’re anything like me, you may find that the time you really must replace an old PC with a new one is often just about the worst time to do so.

Let me share my top 10 tips for smart PC purchasing:

1. Never make a purchase without comparing prices and features, or you’ll pay too much.

2. Never shop in a panic.

3. Try to compare prices among multiple systems in more than one store or online vendor.

4. Don’t buy less than you need thinking you’ll upgrade later. Often you won’t upgrade, or you’ll pay more to add something than you would have if you’d bought it as part of a package originally.

5. Determine whether the PC has many integrated components (video, network, sound, and/or modem) and whether you can upgrade with add-in components later if needed.

6. Make sure that the PC you’re buying runs the version of Windows you want to use.

7. Don’t buy a PC with less than a 20GB hard drive or you’ll exceed your disk capacity too quickly.

8. If you’re buying a PC in a store or receiving one through the mail, don’t accept one packed in a damaged box because it may indicate that the box (and the delicate system inside) was mistreated.

9. Determine the vendor’s return policy before you buy. You shouldn’t have to pay restocking fees or go through a lot of hassle to return defective equipment.

10. Finally, but importantly, make sure to price power protection (a good surge protector and/or a UPS) for the new system. It may be cheaper to purchase power protection separately than to buy it with the new PC.

There are two more issues that can be important:

• The need to buy “up”

• Whether or not you should purchase additional protection or an extended warranty

Buy “Up”

Don’t just buy a PC for what you need right now; buy it for what you feel may be your maximum needs a year from now. For example, even if you’re not currently planning on having a home or small office network, it doesn’t hurt to buy a PC with a network adapter installed or integrated into the motherboard just in case your needs change over the next year.

IEEE 1394 ports for high-speed external drives and digital video connections still aren’t found on all new PCs. If that’s important to you or you expect it to be important in the next year, order a PC with IEEE 1394 ports or plan to buy a 1394 adapter (you install this to an available PCI slot on your motherboard) later.

If you’re buying a budget machine with the idea that you can upgrade the frequently integrated components such as video, modem, sound, and network at a later time, make sure the system you buy allows that kind of expansion room. For example, the last budget system I purchased thinking, “I don’t like that video setup but it’s OK because I have a spare AGP card” brought with it a nasty surprise. One of the budget features of the system included a motherboard without an AGP video port, so I couldn’t use my existing AGP video adapter in it. The manufacturer’s specs did not make this clear, although I could have found out by checking the motherboard information before I purchased it. Live and learn.

Adding Protection at Purchase

Just like when you buy a new big-screen television or a fancy stereo system, you’re often asked when you purchase a new PC if you want to purchase an extended service agreement to provide support and repairs past the 90-day to one-year warranties offered by the manufacturer.

While you need to evaluate this for yourself and your particular situation, my inclination is to refuse extended warranties (with the possible exception of Dell, which has a long history of offering decent after-sales support).

If you’re the type of person who frequently calls for customer service or technical assistance, it’s possible you’ll benefit from the extra period of coverage to support your system depending on its cost. However, it’s my understanding that most people who are going to use support services usually do so within the first 90 days of owning a new PC. If you haven’t called during that period, how likely is it that you’ll call one year and 90 days later? It’s possible the time will run out on the warranty without you making use of the extra price you paid for it.

A Cautionary Tale: The “Fun” Doesn’t Always Stop Here

Remember how I told you that I totaled one of my systems in recreating disasters for this book?

Just to prove my point about the time you have to buy a new PC usually not being the best time to do so, let me tell you a sad story. Today, just three weeks after receiving my new system, as I was beginning to write the last pages of this book, my new PC simply shut itself down. There were no error messages, no warnings.

When I tried to restart it, the system began to beep wildly, and not in one of the recognized beep codes mentioned in Chapter 6, “Transforming Yourself into a Smart Troubleshooter: Detecting, Analyzing, and Diagnosing.” I turned it off and went through the usual precautions so I could check under the cover. I tried to start the system a third time, and noticed a terrible smell (if you’ve ever fried a motherboard, you know this smell).

I also noticed the CPU fan wasn’t turning.

On a three-week-old pristine system that I haven’t had the time to customize yet, this shouldn’t happen. It was running with a full roster of power protection and had not been subjected to any unusual situations, so I ruled out overheating and other issues.

I called eMachines, the manufacturer, and the helpful technician agreed with my diagnosis: fried motherboard. Once the motherboard is dead, any connections supplied with power by the motherboard will no longer receive power, even if the power supply is working. That’s why the CPU fan wouldn’t turn and the monitor had no display.

What killed it, I’ll never know. It may have been damaged in transit but managed to work for three weeks, or the motherboard may have been defective to start.

The point is, sadly, that your problems don’t always end with the purchase of a new system, no matter how well you protect it from harm. But by protecting it from harm, I could rule out whether I contributed to its swift demise.

I’m told I’ll get a replacement motherboard…in three weeks. <Insert big sigh here.> Unfortunately, this system was my replacement.

Panic and inconvenience have been mentioned often in this book, as they should be when the subject is disaster recovery. Yet panic and inconvenience can combine themselves rapidly and forcefully when you hit that miserable phenomenon known as a dead or dying hard drive. This is the subject of the next chapter.