Even the most powerful computers don’t last forever—otherwise we’d all still be running the PCs we had decades ago. But trying to figure out when a laptop or desktop has passed its sell-by date isn’t an exact science.
You might feel like applications and websites aren’t as snappy as they used to be, but it’s difficult to know for sure when you’re using your computer every day. Here we’re going to introduce some helpful tools that can be more objective in their assessments.
These tools should help you decide when it’s time to upgrade to a new computer, and when it’s time to give your current one a spring clean. We’ve also previously written about ways to speed up Windows, speed up macOS, and speed up your web browsing.
Both Windows and macOS come with built-in tools for monitoring system performance. On Windows, it’s Task Manager: Right-click on a blank area of the taskbar, then choose Task Manager. Under the Processes and Performance tabs you get a host of details about how your system’s resources are holding up under the software weight—so you could regularly note these figures week by week (or month by month) to look out for any kind of degradation.
Task Manager itself doesn’t keep any historical data, but a more advanced tool called Performance Monitor does—you can search for it and launch it from the Start menu.
- Right-click on User Defined under Data Collector Sets.
- Choose New and Data Collector Set.
- Name the set, pick Create from a template, then click Next.
- Choose System Performance and Finish.
Using the Action and Start commands you can run a diagnostics check manually, or you can right-click on your new report, then choose Properties and Schedule to have it run automatically every so often.
Performance Monitor isn’t the most user-friendly of tools, so you might find it easier to just…
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