It might seem like a clean install isnt worth the time and effort.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

You probably know that doing a clean install gives you a fresh start and a clean slate.

On one of my laptops (a Macbook Pro,) Iveneverperformed a clean install,ever.

When it was new, I migrated directly from the machine it replaced.

As new versions of OS X came out, I upgraded in place.

Things went smoothly enough I just never bothered.

However, as you use a computerespecially over several yearsyoull get some quirks.

Maybe its slowness when you do a specific thing, so you learn to not do that thing.

Maybe some app crashes all the time, so you find an alternative.

you could probably tell where this is going.

A clean install will kill those bugs for you, almost completely.

If theres something specific to an program, you probably cant get around that.

I knew, for years, and I still didnt do it.

A good clean install also gives you peace of mind.

They dont waste time diagnosing it or running tons of antimalware tools.

Its just faster and safer to start over and restore data from known, good backups.

If youve ever worried the same about your desktop, well, nuke it from orbit.

Its the only way to be sure.

The key here is regularly.

When a new OS launches, thats when you should think about doing a clean install.

Of course, with all of this comes a performance boost, and a pretty significant one at that.

In Windows, clearing out all that crap will save you precious system resources and disk space.

I couldnt figure out why, but if I downgraded everything was fine.

Of course, they never did, and caused problems years down the line.

And its a great feeling, too.

You may even have to restore files from backups.

Its all worth it.

Seriously, andit doesnt even have to be as difficult as you might think it is.

Im willing to bet you could do the same in an afternoon or less.

The benefits you get for your time outweigh the convenience of repeated upgrades in place by a longshot.

Downloaded operating systems are easy to buy, easy to install, and easy to patch.

Youll be surprised how even that old hardware and a new OS can feel like new.

Title image made usingSkalapendra(Shutterstock).