Understanding when to update your computer systems is an important component of running a business.  A computer crash or theft can leave you wondering how you are going to move forward with your business or deal with taxes come tax season.  In addition, increases in hacking, malware, virus injection, and other types of security problems increase the risk associated with keeping important business information on your computer or online system.  

It is important to update your computer systems after every three to five years.  Out of date computer systems utilize out of date software and that can enable hackers to access your personal information.  In addition, out of date computer systems are more likely to fail or have a crash.  Updating computer systems to high quality systems can be cheap and effective and rapid processing full desktop systems can be purchased for less than $400.  

Old computer systems should be replaced with new and quality computer systems.  Buy a removable hard drive to migrate your important files and documents from the old computer to the new computer.  All of your personal files on the desktop and in My Documents can be easily migrated by navigating to your main hard drive, usually the C drive, and then going to Users, and then copying the folder for the users that you want to back up.  Then make sure that you export all of your necessary program files properly, such as QuickBooks backup and Outlook archive features, to the new removable hard drive.  Then copy the files from the removable hard drive to your new computer.  It is recommended to store the hard drive in a safe location, such as your closet at home or in a fire-proof safe.