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Over my years of building and repairing computers, I've arrived at several ways to improve a computer's overall performance. Let's start by taking a look at a working computer's weak points and then learn what can be done to improve the situation.

1) The RAM. Not having enough memory installed in your computer has always spelled dismal performance. I'm always astounded by early Windows XP machines from vendors like Compaq that come into the store with their original "Designed for Windows XP" stickers intact followed by system specs boasting 128MB of memory - hardly enough to run XP with a full compliment of software.

What to do? Max it out! Unless you use an older type of RAM, like RDRAM (Dell, in particular) or SDRAM, getting a gigabyte or two of memory into your system should run you less than $150, and is well worth the investment. When your RAM fills up, your OS "pages" or temporarily moves parts of its data onto your hard drive - and paging is a major drain on system performance. For the relatively low cost, you can't go wrong by filling up empty RAM slots.

2) The hard drive. Hard drives, when compared to the CPU (central processor), RAM, or GPU (graphics processor) are very slow. Operations in memory can run anywhere up to 300x faster than those on a hard drive. What to do to boost hard drive performance? Thanks to dropping tech prices, you've got a couple good options.

Option 1: RAID 0: The term "RAID," tends to scare off some people, but here's the skinny. What you're doing is taking two hard drives and tricking your computer into thinking it's one drive. The information is "striped" onto both drives, giving a decent boost in performance - since it uses two separate channels to pass information to and from the drives. There is, however, one minor hangup: if one drive fails, everything on BOTH drives is toast (for all intents and purposes). However, with DVD media and external hard drives being so cheap, if you backup frequently there's no reason NOT to try out a RAID 0 configuration. Systems I've converted become quite responsive with an array set up. Two good 250GB SATA drives will set you back about $110 and are dead simple to set up in RAID 0 on most modern mainboards. Well worth the investment, if you don't mind a little bit of danger!

Option 2: The Raptor: Most hard drives spin at a healthy 7200 RPM, a mark that has been standard for some time for desktop hard drives. Western Digital, however, has the Raptor series, which boasts a 10,000 RPM spindle

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