Word and Excel slow to load

pd001

According to my wife she has both Microsoft word and excel on her laptop. They are both very slow to load. However once loaded they seem to run fine.
She says that both versions are 2010 'starter packs' (whatever that is).
The laptop is about 3 years old. It had barely been out of the box before she started using it, which is why she chose to use that particular laptop in our household.
The laptop is a Compaq CQ58 and it runs windows 7.
I have installed a further 4gb of ram, which takes the total ram to 8gb. According to my wife that didn't make much difference.

So, my question is, why are both those programs very slow to load?
By the way, there isn't a cat in hells chance that she would want to change to another office utility such as Libre Office or Open Office, or indeed something similar, because she is used to using the programs that she currently uses.

Fightsback

See here for review:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-HP-Compaq-Presario-CQ58-148SG-Notebook.82565.0.html

The subjective routine work speed is satisfactory. However, the impression is negative due to the slow speed and access time of the hard disk. Starting applications is always a bit sluggish. A faster hard disk would remedy this.

Put a SSD in it and use the old drive for back up.

pd001

Fightsback wrote: »

See here for review:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-HP-Compaq-Presario-CQ58-148SG-Notebook.82565.0.html

The subjective routine work speed is satisfactory. However, the impression is negative due to the slow speed and access time of the hard disk. Starting applications is always a bit sluggish. A faster hard disk would remedy this.

Put a SSD in it and use the old drive for back up.

Thanks for that link, much appreciated.

Not too sure that I have the necessary skills to swap out the hard drive for an SSD.
Although my wife backs up her lappy regularly, if I anything happened to get lost when transferring data than I would be in serious trouble

paddyrg

How slow is 'very slow'?

Fightsback

pd001 wrote: »

Thanks for that link, much appreciated.

Not too sure that I have the necessary skills to swap out the hard drive for an SSD.
Although my wife backs up her lappy regularly, if I anything happened to get lost when transferring data than I would be in serious trouble

If you can add ram it's actually not that much more difficult and by far the best upgrade you can do. Once you have used a system the uses an SSD, you can never go back to a HDD.

pd001

paddyrg wrote: »

How slow is 'very slow'?

Just asked her, and she said about a minute.
That is from a position where the lappy is already fully booted up.

pd001

Fightsback wrote: »

If you can add ram it's actually not that much more difficult and by far the best upgrade you can do. Once you have used a system the uses an SSD, you can never go back to a HDD.

As you can see I have already added ram.
I put in an extra 4gb of ram which takes it to 8gb in total.

Is it really not that much more difficult to upgrade to an SSD?

grumpycrab

Re. SSDs - there are many online guides. First question is how big is her C: drive (space USED) as that will dictate the size of SSD (unless you want to do an install from scratch).

PS. the easiest thing to do with an SSD is to image C: to it (obviously); but we should ask - how "clean" is the existing installation? e.g. how many icons are in the notification tray (bottom right counting left from the clock; gives a reasonable indication of the state of the laptop).

pd001

grumpycrab wrote: »

Re. SSDs - there are many online guides. First question is how big is her C: drive (space USED) as that will dictate the size of SSD (unless you want to do an install from scratch).

210GB free of 277GB on her 'c' drive (just checked)

grumpycrab

pd001 wrote: »

210GB free of 277GB on her 'c' drive (just checked)

Blimey - sounds clean! Only 67GB used. Something like this will do then...
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00K9HID0I

e.g. 1. get a caddy for the SSD (either external USB caddy or a caddy that will replace the CD drive**)
2. image C: to SSD (SSD usually comes with software)
3. swap existing HDD for SSD
4. put HDD in eexternal USD caddy or caddy that replaces the CD drive

(**) you can replace CD drive with a caddy which holds an HDD or SSD; if the CD drive is important get an external CD drive (about £10).

pd001

grumpycrab wrote: »

Blimey - sounds clean! Only 67GB used. Something like this will do then...
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00K9HID0I

e.g. 1. get a caddy for the SSD (either external USB caddy or a caddy that will replace the CD drive**)
2. image C: to SSD (SSD usually comes with software)
3. swap existing HDD for SSD
4. put HDD in eexternal USD caddy or caddy that replaces the CD drive

(**) you can replace CD drive with a caddy which holds an HDD or SSD; if the CD drive is important get an external CD drive (about £10).

It is clean.
As I mentioned, although the laptop is about 3 years old, it had barely been taken out of the box when she started to use it.

Thank you for all of the information in your post.
I will have a look at the ssd that you linked to.

The current hard drive isn't that important, but would make a reasonable backup, because its hardly been used.