Breathing new life into your PC Getty Premium images With a few strategic and affordable upgrades, you can give your PC a performance and/or productivity shot in the arm. Is your PC getting a little long in the tooth? Does it take forever to boot? Maybe you’re plagued by virus-like symptoms, such as a flaky Web browser or unwanted pop-ups. Issues like these often drive people to start shopping for a new machine. Although the time may come when you have no alternative (like when hardware components start failing), don’t put the old gal out to pasture just yet. With a few strategic and affordable upgrades, you can give your PC a performance and/or productivity shot in the arm. Add more RAM One easy and inexpensive way to improve an older PC’s performance is to install more RAM. How does this help? More RAM means more room for programs to run, and less time accessing the hard drive, which is a comparative slowpoke. For example, suppose your laptop or desktop is a few years o...