Everybody has a PC these days and at some point our needs outgrow the limits of our current PC, “it’s just not fast enough” you may say. It could be that you need more hard drive space for all the downloads you have stored. Or a new application or game that isn’t running as fast as you’d like. Probably because they require more computer memory or a faster processor. Unless your uses for a PC are restricted to making plain text documents, your pc is likely to get filled with loads of computer stuff. Computer stuff that can fill up a pc so much so that it slows the pc right down.

Upgrading a computer of course is always the way to go if you want to speed it up, but the problem is because technology advances so quickly, most of the newer products such as DDR3 memory, quad CPUs etc aren’t always compatible with our current PC motherboard. It’s quite common to find a particular type of hardware that in order to run it at it’s full performance and compatability that it actually requires a newer operating system to do just that. Take for instance the new dx10 shaders from microsoft. All the newest graphics cards utilize dx10 and dx10 only works on windows vista. So you have alot of the new games that have come out recently which use dx10 shader graphics. In order to play these games and see them with everything notched up to max, you’d actually need to first upgrade your graphics card and also your operating system.

This problem can occur pretty much all of the time when we’re looking to upgrade so much so that if we’re not careful, we might end up upgrading and replacing every part or our PC! But once we have finally decided it’s probably best to dump the old one and get a totally new computer, what exactly could we do with our old PC? Here are some suggestions for exactly that.

1. Let the kids have it? Assuming they’re not little super gamers that will complain if it doesn’t have 4gb of DDR3 ram, an intel quad CPU and a HD4870 video card or maybe even quad SLi! For most kids though, i would say that today’s slightly older PCs are fast enough to meet their needs. As long as the PC can play educational CDs, mini games off the internet and most importantly that encyclopedia cd that every child uses for school homework.

2. Give it to a poor less literate member of the family. We sometimes make jokes at the office about the grandpa who is too stubborn to use a PC until he can afford to buy the latest one. Thing is, most likely that grandpa isn’t gonna be able to afford the latest PC the market has to offer, neither is he going to actually know how to work the computer. What grandpa doesn’t realise is that having an old PC as apposed to the latest model is a great way for him to actually learn how to use a PC in the first place, so that he can be prepared for a better computer later on. Learning how to use a PC for the first time isn’t easy and this is even tru in the case of the elderly!

3. Turn the old computer into a dedicated computer purely for storing files. This is handy, as you would only use it to store all those important personal documents such as bank statements, sensitive data etc while it being disconnected from the internet of course. This way you can protect private documents from hackers or various trojans/viruses that are designes to steal personal information. And you would use your new computer to browse the internet.

As i have explained, old PCs can still be very useful. Either to someone else, or for yourself.

If you know anything about MS-DOS, you’ll remember that it’s a command line driven OS that executes functions typed in at the C: prompt. With MS-DOS you could only get it to do a task by typing in a command at that prompt which you can imagine, it was a rather tedious method of using a desktop PC.

An example would be if you had to load microsoft’s editing program, you would of had to type the name of the specific drive that the editing program was on, and then the exact name of the program with no spelling mistakes of course. If Microsoft edit were in a directory named “programs” you would initiate the application with “C:>programs\edit.com” after which the program would load up. Pretty boring stuff i know… This is just a simple short command so imagine if you had an application that was several or more subdirectories deep? You might see yourself typing in a CMD that’s as long as the width of your computer screen lol. So imagine what it would be like if you needed to type in these tedious commands every time you wanted to start a program!

This is the reason why batch files were so popular. Batch files are little documents with commands written in them and when executed they process each command without you having to type in each CMD manually. Eventually when windows was introduced, you no longer had to type in commands manually each time as now all you had to was point and click with a mouse. However this didn’t kill off the usefullness of making batch files infact they’re just as popular today with some groups as they were back in MS-DOS.

Using windows XP or Vista, these batch files can save you a load of time by auto executing several programs and tasks at once with just one click of a mouse! The best thing is you don’t need to be a programmer of any kind. Batch files are just plain text documents that can be built using windows notepad. As an example you could make a batch file that auto loaded several websites that you always visit everyday or several programs that you use and it just saves time as you only have to click once as apposed to clicking 5 programs one after the other.

All you need is to know where these programs are located on your computer. For instance i might load up Google, MS word, Dreamweaver and photoshop on a daily basis. Instead of opening each one manually i can just write a batch file to do it for me. I’d open up notepad and type in the following:

START “http://google.com”
START “c:/program files/microsoft office/word.exe”
START “c:/program files/dreamweaver”
START “c:/program files/adobe/photoshop”

I would then save this file as say “loadapps.bat” some where on my desktop for quick access. Now every time i click on this file all those programs i mentioned will auto load on their own. Now to make it even more automated i could drop this batch file in my windows start up folder. Then those programs would actually start up each time i boot into windows.

Of course there are other unique ideas you can come up with for use with batch files, but the main thing is you know how to make them now as they will save a few minutes here and there which might not sound like alot, but if you’re someone who uses their computer alot, then trust me it’ll take the repetitiveness out of your everday tasks that can become a mundane affair.