Do I need a new laptop . . . . . . . . ?

The_Salad

Hi Folks, we have an Acer Aspire 5742 laptop with 4GB memory and 500GB hard drive. It is approx 4 years old and was originally loaded with Windows 7 and Microsoft packages (Outlook, Excel, Word, Powerpoint etc . .) from 2007. We're now on Windows 10 but with the same 2007 Microsoft stuff.

We find it a bit slow and Outlook crashes every now and then, very frustrating.

Do we need to buy a new one or can we salvage this one, perhaps wiping it and starting again (our local computer shop does something like this). Any advice would be appreciated. Many thanks.

sofiar

sounds like it may be time for an upgrade"

JJ_Egan

Personally i would wipe and reinstall win 10
Deleting all your junk and unused programs .
If W10 has been updated over 8 then a clean install is much better .

Le_Kirk

What do you mean by slow? What is slow, booting up from switch on to being able to use it? Pressing keys and waiting for a reaction on screen? Firing up a program - Outlook, Word etc. Internet sites loading? Regarding Outlook, what year/version is it? If it is 2003 for example, does it run under W7. Have you searched for issues with W7 and your version of Outlook?

What space do you have left on your 500GB HDD? Can you do a disk clean up?

NiftyDigits

It's a job that you can do yourself with ease. Better still, a clean install to SSD(solid state drive). Cost from £35.

Should transform the performance.

esuhl

Personally, I'd just wipe the drive and reinstall Windows. That should speed things up a bit.

grumpycrab

Similar to previous... ensure current W10 install is activated, backup docs/pics et al; clean install Windows 10 ("reset" rather than "refresh" is one way to do this); reinstall Office 2007. (**ensure you have your Office key first**). May fix Outlook problem - may not.

henm2

esuhl wrote: »

Personally, I'd just wipe the drive and reinstall Windows. That should speed things up a bit.

Or better still install Linux Mint 17.3 Cinnamon edition. Smooth operation, safer and easy to use.

esuhl

henm2 wrote: »

Or better still install Linux Mint 17.3 Cinnamon edition. Smooth operation, safer and easy to use.

Even better, install Arch Linux! It's really fast and lightweight and you have so much more flexibility to configure the installation so it works exactly as you wish. Other distros seem to decide to much for you and make it hard to change stuff (without breaking other stuff), in my experience anyway.

And the Arch wiki is great.

debitcardmayhem

Have you checked on the acer website to see if there is an update for the bios, I would doubt if there is one for W10 but there may be one for W8 . But has been said before do a clean install after making a full backup.