A year in three upgrades -And a happy new year to all.

[PrincessB]

It's nice to have some time away from work and be at the end of another year.

I was musing on the amount of time and effort I used to put into keeping the family desktop machines up to date a few years ago and comparing that to the current situation where I don't feel much requirement to replace anything as it's all great.

I then mused further and realised that despite not thinking I was upgrading much, I've been active enough to keep swapping out the odd bit here and there.

So for no reason, here are my list of three essential upgrades you might consider.

1) Another bigger display.
Some use multiple displays, I've always been of the mindset of using a single display and making sure it was the biggest I was comfortable affording.

Downstairs PC now has a 32" display, replacing the 27" unit which #1 Daughter (borrowed) to take to university. I makes a big difference, two or more windows open has been possible for years, for the first time, it becomes a comfortable experience.

2) Another faster processor.

When I knocked together a budget PC for the office, I bought an i3 processor from E-bay to fit the budget motherboard I'd bought to replace one that had died.

Somewhere in the reviews for the budget (£35) motherboard was a mention that the unit was compatible with Intel's Xeon server processors. And during a dull Sunday afternoon I found an Intel Xeon 1270 v2 for £85.

I like Xeon chips, essentially an i7 without the baggage of the integrated graphics core. A proper quad core with hyperthreading along with clock speeds of 3.5GHz when loaded up and 3.9GHz for single core stuff.

To top it all, I then sold the i3 on E-bay for about the same price I'd paid for it in the first place.

Obviously more modern chips are a bit faster and use less power, but to match performance with what I have, I would not be spending £85.

3) A bigger SSD
I ran out of space on the 500GB SSD I bought in 2013, so in went a 1TB unit which now sells for £150 - As I paid closer to £200, I hope I won't need more space for a bit.
On the plus side, older larger capacity SSD drives still hold a premium, so off I went to E-bay and the old unit sold for just over £50.

#1 Daughter always needs more storage to store the her ever expanding collections of 'stuff' and at one point had three hard drives or various sizes.

This is not a good idea as Windows updates tend to confuse a system and the updates often install about a day or two defore start of term.

We've now settled down to a single 2TB SSHD which works fine, it boosts the boot speed and loading time for freqeuently used programs while offering a fair amount of space for a slight premium over a conventional drive.

So that's it. When I thought I'd not changed anything, it turned out I had.

Perhaps something worth having will turn up in 2019 that is better than doing the odd boring upgrade.

Here's hoping.

B.