Laptop under £500. Is this good value?

interstellaflyer

J_B said:

silvercar said:

That's beyond me!

Don't be so defeatist because first you asked ...

silvercar said:

Toshiba Satellite Pro C660-2F8.
How much would it cost to get someone to fit an SSD and clean it?

Do you have a local computer shop, maybe even a one man band you find on your local Facebook page?

A cheap SSD for under £25 (?) and a couple of hours work, not sure what these folks charge £100 (?)

That's a quarter of what you are thinking of spending.

Food for thought perhaps?

An hour max, if the C660 is anything like my C850D then like many older laptops they have access panels on the back so you can easily upgrade memory and HDDs, that part should only take 10 mins, the longest part would be cloning the old HDD or a fresh windows install and that generally doesn't take very long.

J_B

interstellaflyer said:

An hour max, if the C660 is anything like my C850D then like many older laptops they have access panels on the back so you can easily upgrade memory and HDDs, that part should only take 10 mins, the longest part would be cloning the old HDD or a fresh windows install and that generally doesn't take very long.

Always choose a fresh install to remove all the years of unwanted 'stuff' 😁

poppellerant

silvercar said:

J_B said:

silvercar said:

That's beyond me!

Don't be so defeatist because first you asked ...

silvercar said:

Toshiba Satellite Pro C660-2F8.
How much would it cost to get someone to fit an SSD and clean it?

Do you have a local computer shop, maybe even a one man band you find on your local Facebook page?

A cheap SSD for under £25 (?) and a couple of hours work, not sure what these folks charge £100 (?)

That's a quarter of what you are thinking of spending.

Food for thought perhaps?

I’ve had the fan cleaned out before, it didn’t last that long before it started playing up again. Could that really be the reason everything runs so slowly?

When you say that the fan started playing up again, in what way? If it became a rattling noise the fan bearing might just need the smallest amounts of oil - the hardest part is getting at it and removing the fan blade to get at the bearing.

Worst case scenario, buy a new fan from eBay for around £8 - example here.

silvercar

poppellerant said:

silvercar said:

J_B said:

silvercar said:

That's beyond me!

Don't be so defeatist because first you asked ...

silvercar said:

Toshiba Satellite Pro C660-2F8.
How much would it cost to get someone to fit an SSD and clean it?

Do you have a local computer shop, maybe even a one man band you find on your local Facebook page?

A cheap SSD for under £25 (?) and a couple of hours work, not sure what these folks charge £100 (?)

That's a quarter of what you are thinking of spending.

Food for thought perhaps?

I’ve had the fan cleaned out before, it didn’t last that long before it started playing up again. Could that really be the reason everything runs so slowly?

When you say that the fan started playing up again, in what way? If it became a rattling noise the fan bearing might just need the smallest amounts of oil - the hardest part is getting at it and removing the fan blade to get at the bearing.

Worst case scenario, buy a new fan from eBay for around £8 - example here.

No noise at all! 
Could a fan problem be responsible for all these problems?
1. the fan no longer works, it overheats and the machine switches off.
2. I have only outlook, chrome and excel open and each one often says "not responding" and freezes.
3. Often the mouse disappears from the screen and I have to reboot to find it.
4.  The screen jumps up and down intermittently. the cursor has a mind of its own, just sometimes.
5. Occasionally I'm typing and the words are 6 letters behind me.
6. The most annoying thing is that it drops the internet often, it has only ever been able to pick up the 2G part of the wifi, I'm guessing it is too old to handle the 5G wifi in the house. It drops the 2G when other devices are still online, I need to rebbot for it to find it again. 

getmore4less

I'm sure you will say it is all fixable, but I can't open machines and fix, so there is a cost to it all.

I would back up what you want to keep before doing anything.

As much as I am a fan of keeping things going there does come a point where you can end up chasing a machine to its grave.

Looking at the video the SSD would have been worth a go relatively easy install, as said the windows install is the bigger task.
That would give it a significant performance boost but you need to get to the bottom of the other issues.

Overheating can have all sorts of effects but a few more screws to get to the fan/inside to give the machine a good clean.
That is probably worth a try to  see if it makes a difference

There will be some basic diagnostics you can do before opening up. 
Task manager/performance monitor can check the machine is seeing all 6gb and if the CPU is getting throttled 
There might be tools to help with the wifi 

HDD failures are often more terminal but I did have a desk machine that started playing up that turned out by running diagnostics to be the HDD failing( I am still using machine with SSD replacement). 

silvercar

As much as I am a fan of keeping things going there does come a point where you can end up chasing a machine to its grave.

Was that a deliberate pun on “fan”?

Thanks for all your advice.

Is the AMD Ryzen a decent machine? Is it the equivalent of iOS vs Android the same as intel vs Ryzen?

interstellaflyer

silvercar said:

As much as I am a fan of keeping things going there does come a point where you can end up chasing a machine to its grave.

Was that a deliberate pun on “fan”?

Thanks for all your advice.

Is the AMD Ryzen a decent machine? Is it the equivalent of iOS vs Android the same as intel vs Ryzen?

AMD and Intel have been the standard in Windows based computers for years so no, not an iOS vs Android type thing, at one time AMD machines were considered inferior but this is not the case with AMD Ryzen processors, many would argue that currently they are ahead of the game. 

Were_Doomed

Way back when AMD processors were considered better than Intel. It's only really since the Intel i series (i3, i5, i7 etc.) that Intel took back the Best CPU mantle ... until the Ryzen came along to somewhat level the playing field.

poppellerant

silvercar said:

poppellerant said:

silvercar said:

J_B said:

silvercar said:

That's beyond me!

Don't be so defeatist because first you asked ...

silvercar said:

Toshiba Satellite Pro C660-2F8.
How much would it cost to get someone to fit an SSD and clean it?

Do you have a local computer shop, maybe even a one man band you find on your local Facebook page?

A cheap SSD for under £25 (?) and a couple of hours work, not sure what these folks charge £100 (?)

That's a quarter of what you are thinking of spending.

Food for thought perhaps?

I’ve had the fan cleaned out before, it didn’t last that long before it started playing up again. Could that really be the reason everything runs so slowly?

When you say that the fan started playing up again, in what way? If it became a rattling noise the fan bearing might just need the smallest amounts of oil - the hardest part is getting at it and removing the fan blade to get at the bearing.

Worst case scenario, buy a new fan from eBay for around £8 - example here.

No noise at all! 
Could a fan problem be responsible for all these problems?
1. the fan no longer works, it overheats and the machine switches off.
2. I have only outlook, chrome and excel open and each one often says "not responding" and freezes.
3. Often the mouse disappears from the screen and I have to reboot to find it.
4.  The screen jumps up and down intermittently. the cursor has a mind of its own, just sometimes.
5. Occasionally I'm typing and the words are 6 letters behind me.
6. The most annoying thing is that it drops the internet often, it has only ever been able to pick up the 2G part of the wifi, I'm guessing it is too old to handle the 5G wifi in the house. It drops the 2G when other devices are still online, I need to rebbot for it to find it again. 

1, 2 and 5 could well be down to a faulty fan.  The fan might be seized or just old and worn out - either way, it's both cheap and easy enough to replace.

3 and 4 could be a touchpad setting.  6 could be a driver or your wireless channel needs changing on the router as the current channel is congested by other wireless networks around you, such as neighbour's wifi.

getmore4less

silvercar said:

As much as I am a fan of keeping things going there does come a point where you can end up chasing a machine to its grave.

Was that a deliberate pun on “fan”?

Thanks for all your advice.

Is the AMD Ryzen a decent machine? Is it the equivalent of iOS vs Android the same as intel vs Ryzen?

some puns just happen.

as for the Ryzen they are they are fine and have been popular with game builds for a while it tends to be prise performance driven for use case.

For basic use just about anything you can buy will do it is more about the box/bits  it comes with like screen, build, weight, battery....

That machine seemed to be good price given previous two links.
they sold quick so probably was

A couple more have come up similar specs(one sold out)
https://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/acer-aspire-5-a515-44-156-laptop-amd-ryzen-5-black-refurbished-grade-a-3581057
https://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/hp-15s-eq1018na-156-fhd-ryzen-5-4500u-8gb-ram-256gb-ssd-silver-laptop-ps499-at-aoebay-3580818