Expanding Your Existing Computer System
Can I expand my computer once I buy it?
Depending on the type of computer you have, the answer is yes. Most computers will have room for expanding your memory. You can upgrade your hard drive. You can upgrade your processor. With laptops, not so much as with desktops. With laptops, you can pretty much replace your hard drive and your memory, but you cannot upgrade your processor on the laptop because they're part of the motherboard. On desktop computers, you can replace the motherboard, you can replace the processor, you can replace the hard drive, and you do have those PCI or AGP expansion slots that give you expandability also with additional cards.
How difficult is it to upgrade my computer's memory?
Upgrading your computer's memory is usually a very simple process. Most computers have that as a user accessible slot, and it shouldn't take more than ten minutes to replace the memory. Make sure you're grounded; you don't want to fry the chip with any kind of electrostatic discharge. If you're not comfortable with getting into your computer, then have someone upgrade the memory for you.
What is a "graphics card"?
A "graphics card" is a card that basically takes care of all the information that gets outputted to your screen. It is like its own processor. A graphics card is like a Graphical Processing Unit, or a GPU. It offloads information that otherwise the CPU would have to handle. The GPU or the graphics card handles that by itself, and basically improves the speed of the computer by taking the load off the CPU.
What is a "GPU" chip?
A GPU is a graphical processing unit. It is like a CPU (which is a central processing unit) except that its role is dealing only with the graphics. Say you are doing video editing or gaming; those are really GPU intensive applications, and so instead of the CPU handling those calculations and algorithms they get afforded to the GPU. In that way the computer runs faster because it is less of a task on the CPU.
