Free upgrades

Posted on 11 Feb 2009 at 12:17

If you want to get more out of your kit but not spend a penny in the process, we show you the routes to free upgrades of a range of hardware.

Upgrading, tweaking and customising hardware has become incredibly popular over the past few years, and not without reason. The sheer computing power in modern devices means there's huge scope for expansion. Canon cameras using the DIGIC processing system, for instance, have a complete 32-bit computer on board.

The computing power of even the most humble of modern devices is equivalent to PCs that cost a couple of thousand pounds a decade or so ago: witness our Sansa MP3 player that can run Doom at a frame rate no 486 PC could achieve when the game was originally released in the early 1990s.

Manufacturers don't provide the ability to tweak and update firmware out of the goodness of their hearts. The reason they put upgradable operating systems in their devices is to bring new devices to the market quickly, safe in the knowledge that a bug can be fixed with a re-flash of the firmware.

Beyond tweaking operating systems and firmware, there lies the joyous realm of the overclocker. Again, with the flexibility of modern hardware, the process - once an arcane pursuit - is the work of a few keystrokes.

Tweaking and upgrading devices is as complex as you want it to be, and the odds are that you have at least one piece of kit that's ripe for a free upgrade. Read on to get some idea of the huge range of tweaks for a diverse selection of kit, both simple and more involved.

1. Upgrade your MP3 player with Rockbox

2. Linux on your PDA

3. Overclock your PC hardware

4. Hack your DVD firmware

5. Upgrade - or downgrade - your PSP

6. Turn your Xbox 360 into an iPod & iPlayer hub

7. Unlock hidden power for Canon cameras

8. Upgrade your router to DD-WRT