Dave Posted January 24, 2021 Share Posted January 24, 2021 How we doing all? Something a bit different to the usual chat this lol For the past year, I've been looking at getting both my own laptop and Mrs Chillax's laptop upgraded from Windows 7 to Windows 10 ( I know, should have been done ages ago!! And me working in IT too!). Both laptops are getting on a bit now, but thing is, we both like them! They work fine, hers looking mint and mine looking a bit scratched and worn. Priced up similar spec laptops, and we'd be looking at around £700 each! Soooo, checked if our old ones could even run W10 and got differing info, some saying nope, some saying yes. Took the plunge and bought two W10 licenses at £80 each. But then In had a cunning plan! After much research, I worked out that my laptop could take an upgrade from HDD drive to SSD drive. New drive was only £30. Even better, I thought that it might be able to run two internal hard drives, so its old 600gb HDD could be reused for storage. Bought a carrier that replaces the disused CD/DVD drive and has the HDD fitted to it. Started working on both at around teatime yesterday, both running W10, all updates done, by about midnight. That includes fitting the new drive to mine and modifying it to take the 2nd drive. Difference in how both now run is amazing, much faster. but mine, with windows being installed on the SSD drive, is bloody amazingly fast! Boots up and is usable within 1 minute (because its got SSD, fastboot is enabled in BIOS), unlike before where it took around 2 to 3 mins to boot, then you had to wait till it all settled down before using it. Programs load really fast no lag when using loads of things at once, really really impressive. So if you are thinking of a new laptop, or even had thought about an SSD drive, do it! Its cost us £276 all in, that's for 2 windows 10 licenses, a new MS Office family edition, my new ssd drive and the carrier for it. Oh, plus 8 quid for a roll of red carbon look vinyl that I've wrapped mine with so it now looks brand new!! Hella lot cheaper than £1400 quid! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dr_broon Posted January 24, 2021 Share Posted January 24, 2021 Good skills sir. I have an old laptop that used to be my work one years ago (on my second new one since then). It came with vista, but we were still on xp at work..... I'd been using Ubuntu on it instead of Windows for a while, which was much faster, but then I put an ssd in it and boosted the ram. Like you say, the ssd on the system drive makes it fly on boot. Most impressive on my Ubuntu one is shutdown.. It takes seconds I keep trying to get Karen to get an ssd in her mac that she uses for work. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Posted January 24, 2021 Author Share Posted January 24, 2021 SSD is a must now I'd say! I'm going to see if I can do same on Gayle laptop, although hers doesn't have any wee inspection hatches to check hard drive etc, whole thing has to come apart just to get to hard drive. Even worse for changing the battery in it! But I think it needs it now, she's seen how fast mine is so as she also uses hers for work it would be good to get it done. Thinking I'll see if I can clone her new windows 10 install to save doing it all again. I tried Ubuntu before getting Windows 10 as had always wanted to try a Lynux based OS, and my colleague at work recommended it. I was using it from a usb stick to see what it looked like/how it performed, and admit it did seem fast. But then it wasn't installed on my drive, just an empty usb so didnt have cluttered up files etc to deal with. lol Used it for a few days to get a feel for it, but I just couldn't take to it. For an OS which is based such a basic and simple platform, it was overcomplicated. Even doing a small thing like adding a desktop shortcut was a faff, so decided its deffo not for me! lol Windows 10 is so simple to use it just makes everything a doddle. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dr_broon Posted January 24, 2021 Share Posted January 24, 2021 Ubuntu is fine until you need to do something other than just use it... Then it gets into the spending two hours researching on the Internet and pasting stuff into the terminal. It's faster than Windows though. Was using an old xp laptop a couple of days ago and that was super fast. It's a shame that xp hit the end of the road, as it was the best Windows ever. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KiNK43 Posted January 24, 2021 Share Posted January 24, 2021 SSD is the dream isn't it. I'd imagine there much improved nowdays aswell and all the nvme drives coming out now. SSD I have in my pc is one of the first iterations and remember first boot I was like wow!! Must be incredible now. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Posted January 25, 2021 Author Share Posted January 25, 2021 9 hours ago, KiNK43 said: SSD is the dream isn't it. I'd imagine there much improved nowdays aswell and all the nvme drives coming out now. SSD I have in my pc is one of the first iterations and remember first boot I was like wow!! Must be incredible now. They are indeed mate! Thing is, the price of them, although still a bit more than normal HDD, has come down massively so makes them more attainable too Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Posted January 25, 2021 Author Share Posted January 25, 2021 Old XP was awesome wasn't it!! @dr_broon God them were the days! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dr_broon Posted January 25, 2021 Share Posted January 25, 2021 13 hours ago, Dave said: Old XP was awesome wasn't it!! @dr_broon God them were the days! Yeah.. It just worked and was simple as you needed it to be. I'd love to see how quick Windows 98 or NT would be on a modern pc. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Posted January 25, 2021 Author Share Posted January 25, 2021 be interesting to see Xp on an ssd and 8gb of ram! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KiNK43 Posted January 29, 2021 Share Posted January 29, 2021 Best make sure it's the 64 bit version to address all that ram!! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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