In all seriousness, today we talk about refreshing those older, yet still very capable laptops! Yes, today’s laptops (and desktops) can be very fast and can bring more capabilities; yet they also carry a premium price for those features. Unless you are a committed PC Gamer, writing complex code that you need to compile with speed, edit large movies or audio or doing heavy CAD Work; the well cared for laptop you picked up as far back as 6 to 8 years ago can still serve you well for some years!
Many laptops from that time period shipped with a max of 8GB of RAM and more often than not, a slower Hard Disk Drive. At the time, RAM prices and Solid State Drive technology were a very costly! As of this writing, both RAM prices and SSD drives, are considerably more affordable.
Why should you change a HDD for a SSD?
Speed and responsiveness! Even the best of HDDs can only operates fast. This can mean several minute long boot times, slow opening of applications and a longer wait for updates and shutting down the computer. SSDs can have speeds five times faster, which can give you considerable responsiveness, faster boot times, faster application opening, as well as faster shutdowns.
What about RAM?
Around 2012, many laptops and desktops, were shipped with 2, 4 or sometimes 8GB of RAM. At the time? That was more than enough RAM, for that revision of Windows 10 and most applications. These days, if you have less than 8GB of RAM, you may want to upgrade to at least 8GB or even up to 16GB. This will allow to run modern web browsers with more than a few tabs open, without slowing down your system.
How much does all of this cost?
Upgrading at least the HDD to a SSD will give you a significant performance boost and can be done for anywhere from $125 to well over $200 (IF you need a large amount of drive space!) With RAM, the pricing could be from $50 to well over $100 depending upon how much memory you need and the laptop or desktop that you have. (These rough price ranges include labor costs if Clever Nickname Computers were to do the installation for you.)
If saving money is important to you, upgrading your current device’s system is the right choice to make! Give us a call, send us a Facebook Message or an email and let’s get to work!