Question on Notebooks:

I noticed my computers always seem to slow down after a few years use. Nothing has changed in the software/applications since I first started using the laptop but doing multiple things on the laptop is now significantly slower. Even trying to view a few tabs in the browser takes longer. Why does it happen? Will adding more RAM help to make it faster?

Submitted by Reader

Answer:

Maxing out the memory is always a good move to increase performance, as long as you observe the maximum limit your system can take. However, since your system is a few years old, finding the right RAM chip may be both difficult and expensive.

Over time, your system might have installed updates, cached Internet files, etc. As such, the data on the harddisk might become defragmented and this might be the reason for the slow performance. Just activate the defragmentation tool in Windows to rearrange the data on the platters. If there is still significant slowdown, we suggest doing a clean reinstall to return the machine to it default factory state.