Upgrade old laptop or bin?

debitcardmayhem

i think we should start a fantasy forum league much like fantasy football leagues only you get points for talking balls, and penalised for time wasting!!

jamesd

Or skip the fantasy until we wait for the parents to give their thought. £30 or so is pretty cheap and they may welcome a larger display and not care about portability. Or they might be really unhappy and actually be after the ipad. (shrug) No data yet.

J_B

jamesd said:

Or skip the fantasy until we wait for the parents to give their thought. £30 or so is pretty cheap and they may welcome a larger display and not care about portability. Or they might be really unhappy and actually be after the ipad. (shrug) No data yet.

Indeed - still awaiting a reply ............... but thanks for all of the input!

OnlyTheBestWillDo

jamesd said:

OnlyTheBestWillDo said:

jamesd said:

OnlyTheBestWillDo said:

There is absolutely no pint in trying to match the capacities of the storage drive. It's not like the parents will need the content of the daughter on their 'new' laptop. So even a 120 GB SSD will likely suffice.
Definitely out of the question to spend £25 on RAM. You do realise this is a money saving forum? First of all 4GB is fine; but if more is required one can obtain a 4GB module for £7: https://uk.webuy.com/product-detail?id=smem2q2aa or 2 x 4GB for £12; https://uk.webuy.com/product-detail?id=smem412800204

I think you didn't read the OP properly. The machine is to be given to someone else. So no need to transfer anything from the old install.

Yes, a 120GB SSD will probably suffice. Not sure that she'd want to try second hand RAM, though it's cheaper than new and new can probably be had cheaper than from Crucial.

I wouldn't want to pass it on with an operating system that's no longer getting antivirus and other fixes, better to take the free Windows 10 upgrade option before passing it on.

If the operating system is being upgraded to Windows 10 it's necessary to do an upgrade install before a clean install so that the Windows licensing servers will recognise the machine as having a valid license.  Assuming you trust the people in the Dell support forum who wrote that. Then I'd also want to go with a clean install. 

I suggest that you go back to read my first post in this thread and the OP before you continue along your path.

"She", no doubt, does not care what goes into it. The cost will likely be the only thing of interest. If money is tight, then just SSD for £17.50. If not so tight and wanting to get the best out of the device without spending too much then another £12 on 8 GB of RAM. Do you really think that someone thinks about spending a premium on new RAM for a ten year old laptop because they "don't want second hand RAM". Did you really write that? The laptop is ten years old. The RAM is possibly newer than the laptop and is likely guaranteed for a couple of years at least

There is no need to do an upgrade install. I did not go into detail as the OP understands what is meant by the GenuineTicket method. It bypasses the need for an upgrade install beforehand.
Even that is not necessary as they could simply use the key on the underside of the laptop for the upgrade. But since I advised the OP to upgrade from 7 Home Premium to 7 Professional(another thing about which he has knowledge) before the clean install to SSD of Windows 10; then the product key on the underside is of no use and the GenuineTicket method should be utilised.

https://www.ghacks.net/2015/08/30/how-to-clean-install-windows-10-directly-without-upgrade/

It wasn't actually a user on Reddit who discovered the method

That first post mentions the gender referring to "her" and the one from you I quoted and partly agreed with so suggesting that I haven't read them seems clearly inaccurate given that I used information from both.

It's up to J_B's friend to decide on the parts, personally I'd pick the cheaper combination.

That GenuineTicket method is neat. Not sure I'd want to not do what was suggested in the Dell forum for this model when it's so easy and both involve an upgrade install first but that's a choice for J_B's friend  and I expect that either way will work.

GenuineTicket does not need an upgrade install first....

Norman_Castle

debitcardmayhem said:

i think we should start a fantasy forum league much like fantasy football leagues only you get points for talking balls, and penalised for time wasting!!

We could start a cult called the SSD, oh dear, too late, it already exists.

[Deleted User]

I think the whole decision hinges on this important factor:

[Deleted User] said:

It is so light and portable that Dad can still use when he is sat on the toilet to read the newspapers.

jamesd

OnlyTheBestWillDo said:

GenuineTicket does not need an upgrade install first....

Not needed but you did write "I advised the OP to upgrade from 7 Home Premium to 7 Professional(another thing about which he has knowledge) before the clean install to SSD of Windows 10" and that's also two step upgrade then fresh method.

Personally I'd go with the route suggested on the Dell forum even though it's two steps and one is possible. Though if J_B has drive imaging software handy to provide a safe fallback if GenuineTicket fails for some reason it's largely moot and might as well be tried.

jamesd

Norman_Castle said:

We could start a cult called the SSD, oh dear, too late, it already exists.

SSDs or other non-spinning storage do deliver benefits. So do more modern or faster CPUs. Part of the art and skill is knowing when they are really useful and what the likely benefit is and that's also subject to personal opinion. And more that of the prospective end users than us.

J_B's friend will know whether she thinks the current hardware is fast enough for her parents and if it's fast enough for her most of the time it's pretty likely that she'll think the same about her parents use. My own guess is that 4GB of RAM is doing quite a lot of slow swapping to a spinning hard drive and an 8GB RAM change will eliminate most of that and probably with it the biggest pain point of the spinning disk. But the SSD is also very cheap and delivers its own responsiveness benefits and that's sorely tempting as well. But I doubt that either is truly essential.

OnlyTheBestWillDo

jamesd said:

OnlyTheBestWillDo said:

GenuineTicket does not need an upgrade install first....

Not needed but you did write "I advised the OP to upgrade from 7 Home Premium to 7 Professional(another thing about which he has knowledge) before the clean install to SSD of Windows 10" and that's also two step upgrade then fresh method.

Personally I'd go with the route suggested on the Dell forum even though it's two steps and one is possible. Though if J_B has drive imaging software handy to provide a safe fallback if GenuineTicket fails for some reason it's largely moot and might as well be tried.

It's not a upgrade install; it's just a matter of entering the Anytime Upgrade key and then rebooting. He knows what it means; you don't. You are advising wrongly because you don't know any of the techniques involved.

OnlyTheBestWillDo

jamesd said:

Norman_Castle said:

We could start a cult called the SSD, oh dear, too late, it already exists.

SSDs or other non-spinning storage do deliver benefits. So do more modern or faster CPUs. Part of the art and skill is knowing when they are really useful and what the likely benefit is and that's also subject to personal opinion. And more that of the prospective end users than us.

J_B's friend will know whether she thinks the current hardware is fast enough for her parents and if it's fast enough for her most of the time it's pretty likely that she'll think the same about her parents use. My own guess is that 4GB of RAM is doing quite a lot of slow swapping to a spinning hard drive and an 8GB RAM change will eliminate most of that and probably with it the biggest pain point of the spinning disk. But the SSD is also very cheap and delivers its own responsiveness benefits and that's sorely tempting as well. But I doubt that either is truly essential.

Seriously, you are wrong in just about everything you assert here.
SSD will deliver more pronounced benefits than added RAM. Of that there is no question. Did you bother to watch the video? There are too many people here expounding theories that simply don't carry water in practice. Watch the video and come back.
That will be three things that you have learned in this thread alone. GenuineTicket, Anytime Upgrade and that SSD delivers more obvious benefits than adding RAM.

Sadly these are the kinds of posts in which I need to intervene. If the OP did not know better, they could be totally confused and misled.
Then of course people choose to take offence and report posts because they are unhappy that their erroneous opinions are being challenged by the reality.