Between 2021 and 2022 Sandanotech has been collecting statistical data about computer hardware and software issues encountered by its Westchester clients. The stats provided below she lights about user habits, company hardware procurements and computer maintenance.
Given that the range of clients we have is a mix, it is important to highlight that some of the companies decided to join our managed services, but some of them, because of budget constraint, prefer to use our services on request.
On the other hand, those who have joined our services, are more careful in avoiding downtime and have newer hardware and software. Those who call our IT support services on request, have experienced more downtime because of older hardware and randomness in applying patches and updates.
When users call for tech support and report that the computer is slow, they usually don’t describe the reasons why their machine is acting their way.
Slowness can depend on software problems or ageing hardware. In this scenario, we have though to lay down what we have discovered in the computers of our clients and how we were able to implement a decent solution to correct the issue.
COMPUTERS WITH MECHANICAL HARDWARE -HDD
For machines running on mechanical hard drives, we usually recommend to do first a disk error checkup and disk defragmentation. Once those tasks have been completed, the computer’s speed can be incremented by running Windows updates and by removing unnecessary software.
IDENTIFYING WHAT CAUSES SLOWNESS
Not all the programs were created equal. For example, Outlook and Chrome take up a lot of resources. In the system resources after having hit task manager, find what program takes most resources and maybe propose the user to use the cloud version of it. One example could be if Excel keeps crashing, a user may want to use the onlinbe version of it on OWA.
REMOVE MALWARE
Constantly scanning for viruses can keep system clean, remove infections and prevent the computer from getting clogged with files and programs users do not need.
OPTIMIZING STARTUP PROGRAMS
The startup program is crucial in discovering what resources are taken when the computer starts up. For example, Microsoft Teams and One Drive can be turned off and free up resources.
CLEARING BROWSER CACHE
Keeping browsers such as Chrome up to date allows a faster Internet experience. Also clearing the browsing history will result in a safer behavior as browser does not have to store passwords and cookies. Keep also browser extesnions at a minimum so that the browser won’t slow down or crash.
HARDWARE UPGRADES
If a desktop runs Windows 10 or, even worse, Windows 11, with only 8GB of RAM, I recommend to upgrade the ram at least to 16 GB. That way, multitasking will become easier and several high-intensity programs such as Chrome will run better and faster. On the hard drive side, we have already specified that it’s much better to have a ssd or NVME hard drive rather than a mechanical hard drive. The HDD can be easily cloned to an SSD resulting in 30 per cent more read and write speed.
UPDATE THE WINDOWS OPERATING SYSTEM
Windows 10 has 2 more years of support left as of this writing and many companies are already upgrading their computers to Windows 11. Upgrading the OS right now does not make the computer faster, and honestly it can translate in a bad user expericence because many of our clients in Westchester still don’t like Windows 11, Better to run a fully patched Windows 10 than a Windows 11 system on a 5 years old machine. That would complicate things even further.