Upgrading gramp's PC

[Yami]

I'm currently on holiday at my grandparents house, and I'm sooo glad I have my laptop - his machine loads /very/ slowly - it's not for a lack of CPU or RAM (and I've done all the usual software maintenance).

His specs:
Phenom II x2 @3.1GHz
2GB RAM
9500GT
XP Home 32-bit

I'm thinking it's that his HDD must be six or seven years old (I used the HDD and Windows installation from before I upgraded his system last year) - whenever the system is doing anything it's just GRINDGRINDGRINDGRINDCRUNCH.

So, I'm gonna recommend that he get an SSD - a 60GB or 80GB will be plenty for him. However, I have no idea how good XP is with SSDs - I'm fairly sure that TRIM would not be enabled, and I know that I'd have to do a clean install of whatever OS I use.

Would I be better off just recommending Windows 7 to him (I know he uses a bunch of old programs, so I'd need to look into their compatibility), or since he'd probably be happier with XP (he's 65... ish, and rather stereotypical in not being fond of having to get used to new things ) just reinstall that?
I know he'd be better off with 7 for obvious reasons, but more specifically would he better off with an SSD+Win7, than SSD+XP? By which I mean £70 better off, the cost of a Win7 license.

Thanks,
- Yami
Edit: lol, that was a rather ranty post

 

[MindoverMaster]

Well, If he only surfs online and plays flash games, other than booting Windows faster, a SSD is not really beneficial.

Did you try a defrag, chkdsk, CCleaner, Malwarebytes, etc? Figuring you know this stuff?

I think 7 is the way to go, for security reasons. A lot of older people I know love 7.

 

[Yami]

Yup, done defrag and so on

I figured you're correct about the SSD - I think I'll just get him a 500GB SATA (or perhaps 1TB since there's only £1 difference XD)

 

[4P_Bulldozer]

I'm currently on holiday at my grandparents house, and I'm sooo glad I have my laptop - his machine loads /very/ slowly - it's not for a lack of CPU or RAM (and I've done all the usual software maintenance).

Defrag his Drive and give him some of your old Hardware, maybe he will buy you something for Christmas.

 

[Yami]

Defrag his Drive and give him some of your old Hardware, maybe he will buy you something for Christmas.

Already defragged, as I've mentioned twice now in this thread. First time was a bit vague ('usual software maintenance') but in the post exactly before yours I said I had already done it. Please actually read previous posts.
To be precise, I have, in roughly this order:
- Used CCleaner to wipe unnecessary files
- Used CCleaner's registry cleaner
- Ran Spybot Search & Destroy
- Ran Malwarebytes Anti-Malware
- Ran a full virus scan with whatever he has, Avira I think.
- Defragged using Defraggler
- Performed a boot-time defrag with Defraggler (it allows you to defrag software components such as the pagefile that you can't defrag while fully booted)
- Performed a full checkdisk with error-fixing on.

I'd like to give him some of my old hardware, but that's long gone and not actually as good as the stuff he has now, and my current stuff is already pegged for someone else



Also, I know it's just nitpicking but out of curiosity how come you capitalise random words? In this case 'Hardware' and 'Drive'.

 

[S0ULphIRE]

lol
In other news, yeah def upgrading the hdd would be the logical next step. As already stated SSD just for internet browsing is a little overkill, so yeah just a standard 7200rpm drive. Seagate Barracuda's are awesome if you can get 'em. Not as expensive as the WD blacks, and in my experience work either just as well or better ftw.

 

[Yami]

Samsung SpinPoint F3 ftw Faster than both the WD Blacks and Seagate Barr's, if I recall.

 

[S0ULphIRE]

It's about on par (or theoretically slightly faster) than the 7200.12, enough to be negligible IMO. But then you've also gotta look at reliability, the .12's have the best track record I've seen of any 1tb drive out. I've got two running in my NAS at the moment, they both get heavy usage throughout the day and they're still going strong after more than a year. On the contrary, I've also got 3 F3's. Only one still works (tho tbh one failed because the dock it was in blew up lol).

 

[Yami]

Fair enough, you have the experience so I'll go with your advice

 

[suppahigh]

you could also try and disable all (or most at least) startup processes that run in the background. i've noticed that 2gb of ram is not really that much these days even when it comes to just using the pc/laptop for Internet browsing.