New Laptop

NiftyDigits

Tctopcat wrote: »

TBH we had a pair of HP machines that cost double and lasted 3 months out of the warranty and were FUBAR

I wouldn't have purchased HP....

My Toshiba may soon be entering it's eight year.

Normally I would suggest to stick a cheap SSD into the Aspire 5750 and run a clean install. You can even utilise the recovery DVDs that you made when you first purchased the machine or at least subsequently.
But equally the machine could be a bit....poor. Not the first report of it shutting down suddenly.

Jivesinger

NiftyDigits wrote: »

I wouldn't have purchased HP....

My Toshiba may soon be entering it's eight year.

I have an Acer which is 9 years old. ... but I'm not saying the OP should buy a new one.

My general impression is that many laptops built a few years ago were a bit more sturdy than the recent ones, and past performance of a particular make is no guarantee of future reliability.

NiftyDigits

Jivesinger wrote: »

I have an Acer which is 9 years old. ... but I'm not saying the OP should buy a new one.

My general impression is that many laptops built a few years ago were a bit more sturdy than the recent ones, and past performance of a particular make is no guarantee of future reliability.

I also have a nine year old ACER laptop(due to be retired, unlike my eight year old Toshiba that has the AHCI and the ability to accept 4GB of RAM, so was ripe for an SSD) and an eight year old ACER netbook. That wasn't my point. My point is user serviceability. I had dismantle the Netbook completely in order to upgrade the RAM and again to swap to an SSD. Same issue with the OP's Aspire E15.

Not exactly user friendly.