[Closed] Laptop connundrum

It was all going fine until you said you were going to do it. 😉

From the sound of it, probably, yes.

I upgraded my MacBook Pro with a new SSD and 16GB of RAM, gave it a clean and now it feels like a new (and very quiet) machine, all for a couple of hundred pounds. So I'd say yes, go for it.

It was all going fine until you said you were going to do it.

cant be any more complicated than a 2-stroke can it? 😀

Its a pity the mobo will only go up to 4GB. 16GB is just being greedy.

Why are you bothering? If it runs and works leave it alone.

It has Vista on it. 👿

Put the money towards a Mac?

I'll get me coat.

New battery and a bit more ram will be nice. New os, clean install makes sense. Not sure I'd bother with the ssd.

Are you going to be able to get all the drivers if you upgrade to Windows 7. We have an old HP laptop that we can't get Windows 7 drivers for and trying to run it on W7 the Vista drivers won't install.
I would be inclined to buy new as you have no idea how long the motherboard will last on the current laptop or just stick with it, as is, if it does what you need.

I just upgraded my ageing work laptop (core 2 cpu, 4GB ram, 5.4k drive, Vista) by fitting an SSD and switching to Windows 7. It's certainly faster (it used to take 15 minutes to boot into a usable state although a lot of that was domain related, it's about 3 minutes now). Having a clean OS install likely helps to (I didn't think Vista was too bad but I'm the exception 😉 ). I don't really notice CPU issues but even 4GB RAM is a pain at times however if your wife isn't going to be running multiple apps etc at the same time she'll probably be OK. Having said that if you can sell it for £100 you can get a decent spec new one for £400-450 so not much more outlay and you get a warranty etc (although not an SSD at that price).

good point craig - I can go and check W7 driver capabilities.
Will do a bit more research.

I would be inclined to buy new as you have no idea how long the motherboard will last on the current laptop or just stick with it, as is, if it does what you need.

+1

Having said that, I recently retired a Dell Vostro that Mrs J and latterly the kids had been [s]ab[/s]using that was nearly 10 years old - tough as old boots that one.

[i]It has Vista on it. [/i]

So?

Laptops are like most things in (modern) life:

If they work, leave them alone - if they are broken, throw them away.

Put windows 98 on it, watch it fly.

Having said that if you can sell it for £100 you can get a decent spec new one for £400-450 so not much more outlay and you get a warranty etc (although not an SSD at that price).

HP are doing some laptops, Sleekbook and Ultrabook, in that price range with 32gb SSD plus normal HDD so you get the best of both worlds with fast boot up and storage capacity too. Battery life has been good too on the couple we have bought for work. I'm not a big fan of HP, in fact I said I would never buy from them again, whoops! I can't knock these laptops though. Staples have them in stock if you want to get your hands on one and then buy elsewhere or get them to do a price match.

I can go and check W7 driver capabilities.

If it runs Vista it'll run W7, it's the same driver model.

Our HP laptop had problems with the wireless adapter and graphics drivers. Tried upgrade over existing Vista and a clean install. HP website only had Vista drivers and searching internet couldn't get anything else to work correctly.

It's worth remembering that laptops take a bit of a beating mechanically, simply from being handled, passed around, carried about and so on. It's not obvious, but over time the chassis starts to creak a bit, the motherboard may be flexing slightly, and the mechanical vibrations may cause stress on the electronic components. So you might end up with stuff like HD failures, cooling channels being blocked, you'll probably lose some rubber feet, the backlight or inverter may fail etc etc. If you're already several years into the life of a laptop this stuff might start happening sooner than if you upgrade.

Having said that - why upgrade? If it's getting slower, there's no point in chucking money away on hardware. It'll be software issues. Unless its use has changed (which it sounds like is not the case) then just re-install (if you can't clean it up manually) - it'll be good as new then and cost you and the environment nothing.

Cougar, I wasn't correcting you but if you can shed any light on ensuring/forcing the Vista drivers to work with Windows 7. I would appreciate your input as I would like to move away from Vista

As above, sell the old un to make up the difference, and buy an i5

main reason for changing on is that W7 is so much better for sharing/networking with my W7 desktop compared to vista.

It seems you cant buy W7 laptops anymore from Currys for e.g.
They want you to buy W8. *shrugs*. Would prefer W7 I reckon.

Perhaps hardware upgrade not strictly necc. But I reckon W7 rebuild would be and thought that since an SSD did such luvly things to my PC it seem an idea to sling one in. And then I thought, well why not the RAM too?

This is how an Inbred frame ends up wearing XTR brakes you know 😉

Just buy W7? Or embrace W8?

Nothing speeds a PC up like a re-install, not even SSD!

my packard bell is better speced than that and cost not much more over a year ago

was initially worried about the build quality of a cheapy brand but its been fine, despite the best efforts of my 2 yr old son

Cougar, I wasn't correcting you but if you can shed any light on ensuring/forcing the Vista drivers to work with Windows 7. I would appreciate your input as I would like to move away from Vista

Only compelling reason I can think of offhand is that the driver does an "are you Vista, yes / no?" check on install, and I'd expect updated drivers to fix that sort of stupidity. Architecturally, Vista and W7 are very similar; they might not be optimal but I'd expect drivers to at least work. This may be an oversimplification on my part, but if there are any showstoppers then it's something I've not thought of.

If it is the installer rather than the driver that's the issue, running it in a compatibility mode may help.

My parents' laptop died recently & so I ended up digging out my other half's old Dell laptop out to see whether that would be any good until they replace it.
It was rubbish. Really slow & cludgy, running Vista with only 1gb or RAM. I gave Win7 a try and it has completely transferred it. Way quicker than it ever was & that was with no hardware changes.

I'd give your upgrade path a try, but just do the Win7 install first & take it from there.

If you want to speed up an old laptop get a memory stick and 'readyboost' it you will be surprised at the difference