Supergeekblog

Julie over at Gear Diary has a great post this morning on the reasons why upgrading your computer right now might not be the best idea.  Head on over and check it out.

Overall – she is right.  The deals right now, might not be what you really need and there are a lot of things one can do to increase performance on a PC or Laptop.  Scanning for malware, spyware, etc can increase performance right away.  (I couldn’t tell you guys how many times people have had me look at their PCs and just running Spybot fixed the majority of their issues.)

So if like a lot of people, you are toning down the Christmas list, Julie makes some really good points as to why a new computer might not need to be the top thing on your list.  (That being said… there is certainly a point when a PC is *not* worth fixing or upgrading.  Recently took a look at a Win98 machine and the only recommendation was to keep an eye out for a new one.)

Technorati Tags: Windows, Holiday Shopping, Troubleshooting, Upgrades

Jason over at Lifehacker had this great little find.  If you, like me, tend to reinstall Windows from time to time…  (Huh, that beta software really *was* beta… doh) this little application might be a great help.

DriverBackup2 is a lightweight driver-backup tool. The application is portable with a caveat: you’ll need administrative privileges for full use. You can opt to backup one or all of your drivers, the backed up files are dumped into a tree structure based on driver name. DriverBackup2 also allows you to restore and delete unnecessary drivers.

With newer OS’s (XP SP2/3, Vista, etc) driver installs tend to be a bit more friendly.  However, a great example is my older IBM laptop that runs WinXP.  Every time I reinstall, I need to get new vid, ethernet, etc drivers from them.  (Since I can never seem to find the backup folder on the external drive where I save them after downloading.)

Try it out and see what you think – could be quite the handy util.

Technorati Tags: Utility, drivers, backup, windows