Business Laptop/Upgrade SSD

[dirkpitt45]

My mom has an older hp (HP Compaq nc8430 Review (pics, specs)) that she bought, I guess 3-4 years ago maybe, not sure TBH. She doesn't use it for any gaming, just office, powerpoint, excel, surfing, and youtube.

With the one she has now, it's slowly dying I'm pretty sure lol. It's incredibly slow with xp, and it sounds like the hdd is dying. The cpu also powers up and heats to around 80c opening office programs. Though it's had a lot of crapware installed on it, last IT company they used (her work) were dolts. Installed panda, then that got all messed up, and they couldn't figure out how to remove it competely. Then they wanted to install norton on everyone's machines, but thankfully she gave them boot before that...

I was thinking since she stores everything on the severs at work, a SSD could solve some problems. Just an OCZ 80gb or something cheap, could speed things up considerably.

But should we bother getting a SSD or just get a whole new laptop? (subsidized so)

 

[MindoverMaster]

Just make sure her temps are OK before doing so. you could be putting to much stress on the RAM or CPU.

 

[dirkpitt45]

Before doing what?

I was mostly wondering about the last part; is it worth upgrading to a SSD or going with a new laptop altogether.

 

[MindoverMaster]

It would be benifical for the SSD, yes. If you go that route, you will need to varify that it IS the HDD that is bad.

 

[dirkpitt45]

Still doesn't come close to answering any of my questions but ok.


How would I verify the hdd is bad? It's just an 80gb, probably 54000rpm seagate.

 

[KSoD]

It wouldnt be worth it to upgrade to a SSD until you verify that it is for sure a HDD issue. thinking it is and knowing it is are 2 different things. You have said nothing about trying to reinstall the OS itself to try and resolve the issue. That would be the first step in the process before jumping to an SSD.

 

[Fazza]

What I do at work when someone complains that their 4 year old laptop is running so slow it takes forever to do anything is first of all make sure they have at least 1GB of RAM and if the laptop can handle it I stick in 2GB (if you're running XP and you have less than 512MB of RAM then upgrading to 512MB or more will make a huge difference).

I then backup all their data and wipe the hard disk and re-install the OS, run Windows Updates, install all the latest drivers and then re-install all the software like AntiVirus and Office and then the machine runs sweet as a nut!

 

[dirkpitt45]

It wouldnt be worth it to upgrade to a SSD until you verify that it is for sure a HDD issue. thinking it is and knowing it is are 2 different things. You have said nothing about trying to reinstall the OS itself to try and resolve the issue. That would be the first step in the process before jumping to an SSD.

No need to be rude.


I would've tried a clean install but I can't. No xp disc, and she doesn't want to do that, since they'd have to set it up with the servers and other stuff.

 

[MindoverMaster]

Mak isn't rude. He is stating a very good point.

So if you get the SSD, how will you get XP on it, I'm wondering?

 

[dirkpitt45]

Why would I put xp on it? I don't have an xp disc....

Windows 7 home would be installed.