When is it time to get a new laptop?

clareski

I have had my current laptop for around 8 or 9 years.  It is an Acer Aspire E15, label reads:
Intel Core i5-4210u 1.7GHz with turbo boost up to 2.7GHz
Intel HD Graphics 4400, up to 1792 MB Dynmic Video Memory
4GB DDR3 L Memory
1000 GH HDD     (I have no idea what any of this means).

I use my laptop for doing monthly finances on Microsoft Office, and general browsing.  I have a tablet that I bought to replace the laptop, but really need it for MS as easier to cut and paste etc.  Most of my day to day browsing and banking is on my phone.

The laptop is very slow - I don't know if this is due to the age or storage.  I have a lot of photos which I also have stored in the cloud  via Google and Amazon, and currently with Dropbox.  I have copied onto an external hard drive too just to make sure I don't lose them.

How can I find out if the slow start up/browsing etc is fixable or not?   

Thanks

Neil_Jones

Put some more memory in it and add an SSD.  You'll probably need a 2.5" SSD based on the age of the laptop, but that's fine

The unit will do what you want then in a reasonable time and probably last until it packs up altogether.

Sea_Shell

I agree with swapping out the drive for an SSD....ASAP.

We were in a similar position a couple of years ago (I had a thread....goes off to look), but in a nutshell, ours got slower and slower until one day it packed up completely.

Luckily a local computer repair shop, managed to retrieve all the data and swap the disk drive, and it was (and still is) good as new!!!!

It cost us £155 IIRC, inc labour and data retrieval.   


Don't wait for it to go bang!!!

Sea_Shell

Here's a link to my thread...

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6235043/help-laptop-wont-start

clareski

Thanks both. I took it to a local computer shop a few years ago and have a feeling they put in a SSD, and also put photos on external hard drive. I think it cost around £150 so would make sense.  Will have a look to see if I can find paperwork. 

Miser1964

>How can I find out if the slow start up/browsing <

A starting point would be to start Task Manager and look at what processes are consistently hogging CPU, Memory or Disk. Also look at the 'Startup' tab to see what is being started automatically which may be slowing the laptop. Third party anti-virus like Norton are notorious for this.

4GB of RAM is on the low side especially if you've been upgrading Windows and are using Windows 10. If you're still on Windows 7 or 8, then getting an updated laptop would be a good thing.

Marvqn1

clareski said:

Thanks both. I took it to a local computer shop a few years ago and have a feeling they put in a SSD, and also put photos on external hard drive. I think it cost around £150 so would make sense.  Will have a look to see if I can find paperwork. 

Unless they removed the DVD drive, I don't think the laptop would have enough internal space for both an SSD and the 1TB HDD.

Chickereeeee

Marvqn1 said:

clareski said:

Thanks both. I took it to a local computer shop a few years ago and have a feeling they put in a SSD, and also put photos on external hard drive. I think it cost around £150 so would make sense.  Will have a look to see if I can find paperwork. 

Unless they removed the DVD drive, I don't think the laptop would have enough internal space for both an SSD and the 1TB HDD.

I imagine the spec OP provided was for what they originally bought. The shop probably swapped the 1TB HDD for a smaller SSD, and put the HDD into an external drive carrier.

clareski

Miser1964 said:

>How can I find out if the slow start up/browsing <

A starting point would be to start Task Manager and look at what processes are consistently hogging CPU, Memory or Disk. Also look at the 'Startup' tab to see what is being started automatically which may be slowing the laptop. Third party anti-virus like Norton are notorious for this.

4GB of RAM is on the low side especially if you've been upgrading Windows and are using Windows 10. If you're still on Windows 7 or 8, then getting an updated laptop would be a good thing.

Thanks, will have a proper look at that later.

Edit...have been running this for about 15 mins, no idea how long it will take.
Apps is showing 8
Background processes 87
Windows processes 101

clareski

I have found the receipt for work done on the laptop, in 2019!!
Fit 256gb SSD - ghost clean up windows
Copy data to ext hdd

Not really sure what this means, apart from photos bring stored on external drive. 

clareski

Four hours later, Task Master data still looks like it is updating (don't know if this is continual?).  I cannot paste the Snipping Tool onto this comment, is there anything I should be looking for?

Great tip about Startup, I had no idea about this.  I have changed everything to 'off' apart from Microsoft Edge.

I have checked Windows and it is running Windows 10 Home, installed in 2020.