Laptop upgrades

silly_moo · 12 October 2016 at 3:55PM

Hi Techie people, can you please help?

My laptop is almost 7 years old and is getting so slow it's driving me mad. It was a decent machine when I got it and I'm wondering whether it would be moneysaving to buy more memory for it (I have one empty slot, 4gb in there currently) rather than getting a brand new laptop.

I googled my memory part name and it seems that you can't get it any more so can you please let me know if I could just put different brand in? How could I check which ones would be compatible with my laptop?

And also, my processor is an i5 - are i5 processors these days better or is it the same thing that I bought 7 years ago? Apologies if this is a stupid question but I'm totally not up do date with modern technology.

Thanks

NiftyDigits · 12 October 2016 at 4:15PM

Better to spend the RAM fund on an SSD within and clean install Windows 7 to it.

Your issues will likely disappear.

Brand name and model number?

silly_moo · 12 October 2016 at 4:20PM

NiftyDigits wrote: »

Better to spend the RAM fund on an SSD within and clean install Windows 7 to it.

Your issues will likely disappear.

Brand name and model number?

It`s HP Probook 4720s

NiftyDigits · 12 October 2016 at 4:28PM

silly_moo wrote: »

It`s HP Probook 4720s

Here is an example of the performance of your laptop with an SSD fitted:

Unfortunately, the laptop appears to be a bit of a pig of a design, so it will be a bit more fiddly than usual to fit the SSD.

http://h20628.www2.hp.com/km-ext/kmcsdirect/emr_na-c02439213-2.pdf Page 87

NiftyDigits · 12 October 2016 at 4:42PM

Video guide here:

More fiddly than is usual, but you can do it yourself.

Best to have the re-installation media and Drivers ready before you swap over if you intend to go down this route.

120GB SSD around £40. 240GB SSD around £60.

That would be my recommendation. External caddy for your old HDD around £4. That way all your data will remain intact on the old HDD. Easily accessible by plugging it in via USB.

Le_Kirk · 12 October 2016 at 4:56PM

Well what a strange thread. Post #3 is quoting an answer that was never posted (or has subsequently been deleted) and posts #5 & #6 refer to something that is not contained within the body of the post. What is going on here?

NiftyDigits · 12 October 2016 at 5:20PM

Le_Kirk wrote: »

Well what a strange thread. Post #3 is quoting an answer that was never posted (or has subsequently been deleted) and posts #5 & #6 refer to something that is not contained within the body of the post. What is going on here?

Aaahhh.... do you mean that you cannot see the YouTube links?

First here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bao0X01-F0

Second here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYvkv3lhFCs

silly_moo · 12 October 2016 at 5:29PM

Thanks, I`ll have a look at all the videos and links later and see what I think.

NiftyDigits · 12 October 2016 at 5:38PM

If you really think it's outside your remit, though I think that you can do it, the other option is to back up your important data and to run a clean install of Windows 7.
That will bring it back to 'as new' performance, especially as it will be without unnecessary bloat.
But then you'll need an external source to which to put your old data and you'd be depending on a seven year old mechanical drive for the new installation.

A new SSD will take performance somewhat beyond 'as new' performance and all your old data will be intact on your old HDD. You can copy what you want over to the new SSD after OS installation.

Laptop upgrades

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