Another Computer Question

[BobR]

I ended up with a couple of laptops from my son. One is a Mac so I won't do anything to that one but the other is a Samsung R580, I think they call it a notebook. I was thinking of tinkering around with it and put in a Solid State drive and up the RAM some and then load Windows 10. I know it won't really be the whiz bang like some of the newer ones but do you (anyone) think it would be feasible and actually give me a decent computer or is there more to it than that?

bob

[Hawkmoon]

A friend has been switching all his computers to solid state drives, and he says it makes a tremendous difference. Case in point -- he uses the freeware (open source) Libre Office suite. I have that on my computer, and I regularly kvetch about how long it takes for the splash screen to load, display, and go away before the actual program shows up. He has always said he doesn't find the wait nearly as interminable as I claim.

A few days ago he started up Libre Office on a laptop that doesn't have a solid state drive yet. He e-mailed me specifically to apologize. 'Now I know what you were talking about." I think it's worth a try ... except that I don't think it's worth buying Windows 10 for it. Maybe some flavor of Linux?

[bedlamite]

Looks like it's either an I3 or I5. An SSD will definitely make it faster, but unless you have a specific need for Windows, I'd agree with Hawkmoon and put Linux Mint on it: https://linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=261

[lee n. field]

Review I pulled up said i5, from 2010.  If so, pretty early for that.   Max the RAM, put in a solid state drive, you'll be fine.

[MechAg94]

I may upgrade the home computer before long.  I will have to keep solid state drives in mind.

[Ben]

Review I pulled up said i5, from 2010.  If so, pretty early for that.   Max the RAM, put in a solid state drive, you'll be fine.

Word.

As for Mech, I would ONLY consider an SSD. They are dirt cheap and vastly outperform mechanical drives. A couple of years ago, you could still make the case for an HDD based on cost vs performance. Not so anymore. These days I would only buy an HDD as a backup storage or archival drive.

[BobR]

Word.

As for Mech, I would ONLY consider an SSD. They are dirt cheap and vastly outperform mechanical drives. A couple of years ago, you could still make the case for an HDD based on cost vs performance. Not so anymore. These days I would only buy an HDD as a backup storage or archival drive.

But what will people do for impromptu signal mirrors if they can't take apart  an old HDD for the platters?

I will see what processor his computer has and decide what to do from there. It may become a computer for tuning my bike and things like that. Or I may just get rid of it.

bob

[cordex]

As for Mech, I would ONLY consider an SSD. They are dirt cheap and vastly outperform mechanical drives. A couple of years ago, you could still make the case for an HDD based on cost vs performance. Not so anymore. These days I would only buy an HDD as a backup storage or archival drive.

Agreed.  At this point for personal machines the decision is between M.2/U.2 SSD and SATA SSD.

And as you say, HDDs do still have their place in NAS arrays and similar.

[BobR]

It looks like I can go to 8GB Ram and a 480GB SSD for about 100 dollars, that will work for me. My neighbor across the street is the IT for a company here so I will send it to work with him for an OS, whether Win10 or something else.

bob

[HeroHog]

I literally have a stack of Laptop SATA HDD drives, ALL .5+ tb in size, next to my chair and a 3x bigger stack of them on my Entertainment center of old ones I use just as backups and for offline storage. What I don't own is my 1st SSD drive... yet. One of these days though.