Share/Bookmark My wife uses an Apple Macbook that’s about 5-years old. She loves the thing, but when she started using it for photo editing she quickly became frustrated with the meager storage offered by its 80GB hard drive. Trying to scrimp and save, she poured over the contents of her drive, looking for things to delete. She bought an external terabyte hard drive so she could dump her pictures when she needed to, but every other day she was seeing warning pop-ups about her limited drive space. She was getting really frustrated and it was making it difficult for her to do her job. Then it occurred...

Share/BookmarkWhen thinking about improving your computer, show love to the outside too! More often than not the PC tower is shoved out of the way and you spend all your time with the peripherals: mouse, keyboard and monitor. If you’re looking to improve your computer experience, upgrading these items is a great place to start. Monitor Have you ever wished you monitor was smaller? Me neither. Visual display is a field where bigger is always better. Larger displays provide plenty of benefits; they’re easier to read, they offer more all around real-estate for multiple windows and tasks, they make...

Share/BookmarkWith such a massive host of available upgrades, it’s hard to know where to begin. You may have only a vague idea of what you want: “I just want my computer to be faster” or you may have very specific needs: “I want my computer to be able to run Photoshop.” In either case the steps are the same: identify where you’re at, decide where you’d like to be, and then, buy the parts from OutletPC that will get you there! Identify where you’re at: With RAM While there’s no such thing as too much RAM there are diminishing returns on added RAM past a certain point. If, for example,...

Share/BookmarkUpgrading your processor can be tricky; there are a lot of compatibility issues which can make the whole operation a headache. However, if your system is bogged down with an ancient, out-of-date processor, nothing will give you better bang-for-your-buck than will a shiny new CPU. Compatibility Determining compatibility is far-and-away the most difficult part of a successful CPU upgrade. This is because compatibility is entirely determined by your computer’s motherboard—a component about which you probably know very little. The first thing you should know is that every motherboard is...

Share/BookmarkUnless you’re like me and have cursed yourself with a crappy laptop, you’re probably reading this from a computer monitor. (I suppose, even if you’re reading on a crappy laptop, it’s still considered a monitor, just a stupid, crappy, stupid one.) They’re everywhere, obviously, because you simply can’t use a desktop computer without them. (Do blind people need computer monitors to use computers? Somebody should answer me that in the comments.) As with all computer parts, however, monitor purchasing can be a scary voyage through a dark forest of terms you’ve never heard...