Upgrade older laptop

[bc.gold 3,403]

The HP is about four years old and still works good for most purposes but has always had to struggle with large pdf files having a three or four hundred page count.

 

For instance the Dykes Automotive Encyclopedia (1921) has 945 pages and the 4 gigs of ram just can not handle it. This and many other books of interest are free to download from the open library.

 

Thousands of tittles to choose from, Hand-Forging and Wrought-Iron Ornamental Work

Experimental glass blowing for boys

Practical photography: on glass and paper published 1864

 

What I love about the old books is that they're written in layman's terms

 

Like most consumer rip offs the HP shipped with 4 gigs of ram along with a 7000 rpm SATA hard drive pre loaded with Windows, the Win OS was stripped with a Linux OEM installation on the laptops first boot. I've been a Linux fan since the early 1990's.

 

The upgrade under $200.00 for the 500 gig solid state hard drive and 16 gig of ram and 20 minutes to watch a youtube video on how to disassemble the laptop.

 

Edited March 27, 2019 by bcgold

[cafoose 3,354]

Just got this from and really happy with it! It's fast with plenty of storage and the price was right!

https://www.ebay.com/itm/323586446430

 

[bc.gold 3,403]

57 minutes ago, cafoose said:

Just got this from and really happy with it! It's fast with plenty of storage and the price was right!

https://www.ebay.com/itm/323586446430

 

Awesome, I'm still working on my upgrade but would like to ask a favor, download this pd file from open library and let me know how your new laptop handles scrolling through the 945 page file. https://openlibrary.org/books/OL12195917M/Dykes_Automotive_Encyclopedia_(1921)

[Sarge 3,463]

My last laptop was a Dell refurb bought from one of the Ebay contractors - lasted for almost 4 yrs before the drive finally died, along with most of my files. I had done several backups to my desktop pc, thankfully and was able to recover most of the data I'd thought was lost, but not all of what was really important.

 

Be careful with the lower brands on SSD's - while they work fine at first, they seem to degrade a lot faster than say a Samsung or one of the other premium brands. The off-breed drive in my old Dell gave zero warning, just failed to boot one morning and even with using stand-alone plugs/cables linked into another one I could not get anything off that drive - it was completely dead. RAM is great, but unless you work on improving the entire pipeline from the RAM, to the drive and back - you don't gain any real data processing. Processor speed isn't really that much of a factor - that pipeline is everything and on some boards you can replace both the North and South bridges to help resolve bottlenecks. Many of the newer multimedia-friendly pcs now using Win10 are using dual drives - one that is a SSD, the other is a HDD with at least 1TB of storage space. The SSD keeps the thing moving along at high speeds, then in the backround backs things up on the HDD - they work quite well, but the factory built units lack enough RAM to keep up for long. Those machines will beneft the most from large RAM upgrades as they already have the higher rated bridges and board built to handle heavy loads - such as processing media formatting.

 

I had originally purchased one of the premier Dell Inspiron models with the Intel 8th Gen i7 CPU units with dual drives like this -

https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-laptops/new-inspiron-17-3000/spd/inspiron-17-3780-laptop/NNlok7ws003s

Had it less than 24hrs - then returned it. No complaints about speed, but the way they built the pipeline it had a bad bottleneck that wouldn't allow it to shut down in a timely manner, which would have gotten much worse over time. Basically, all the backup processing was taking far too long - you could hear the HDD grinding away, trying to play catch up storing the files in their proper place. I also hated how the thing was laid out in relation to the keyboard and other basic design features - it was not all that friendly to use. I ended up going with a custom built Lattitude business class model that is much more rugged and running Win7 Pro 64 for now - working on switching to Linux slowly and I'm liking it so far. Those high-end multimedia friendly units are nice, but their build quality as far as the case and such is pretty poor - they feel flimsy and have a high failure rate of their boards from the whole case flexing, generally right after the warranty expires. Seems most also lack the old school plugs to interface into the chassis - almost no USB plugs and their disk drives are about as cheap as they can get them. I like this Lattitude, even despite the fact its the older, slower processor since its a 5th Gen i5 and the HDD in it is a slug for now. I will upgrade the chassis with a SSD here soon - but 1TB and bigger Samsung units are pretty expensive, although worth every penny. There is software and interface setups to run with my included USB 3.0 plug - which is as fast or faster than the processor. With a good quality cable - you can set these up to back up to a second HDD or SDD easily and they just run in the backround. This frees up the pipeline system much more efficiently - many servers are set up this way from what I understand. It can be fun building one of these things - but do your homework since mistakes can be costly and you end up with a machine that is as slow as molasses in Alaska.

 

Sarge

[rmaynard 15,427]

I just recently purchased a new ACER laptop with Windows 10. I TOTALLY REGRET THE PURCHASE. Worst operating system I have ever owned, and I am a loyal Windows user since version 1.0. Best systems in my opinion were XP & 7. I have stopped using Win 10 and gone back to my old HP with Win 7.

 

Just my 2 cents worth.

[cafoose 3,354]

15 hours ago, bcgold said:

Awesome, I'm still working on my upgrade but would like to ask a favor, download this pd file from open library and let me know how your new laptop handles scrolling through the 945 page file. https://openlibrary.org/books/OL12195917M/Dykes_Automotive_Encyclopedia_(1921)

I'm not familiar with that site. How do I download the file? I'm not seeing the link

[bc.gold 3,403]

2 hours ago, cafoose said:

I'm not familiar with that site. How do I download the file? I'm not seeing the link

They did a site maintenance yesterday and the Dykes e-book is now missing. Thanks

[bc.gold 3,403]

3 hours ago, rmaynard said:

I just recently purchased a new ACER laptop with Windows 10. I TOTALLY REGRET THE PURCHASE. Worst operating system I have ever owned, and I am a loyal Windows user since version 1.0. Best systems in my opinion were XP & 7. I have stopped using Win 10 and gone back to my old HP with Win 7.

 

Just my 2 cents worth.

Download one of the Linux versions, the names may differ and have various features embedded to enhance user productivity but their all built on the same kernel.

 

If you do not know how to make a live usb or dvd just purchase what you need already pre-loaded from the distro watch web site. With the live OS you can run this from a usb port with out installing. Try before installing, it will run a bit slower from the USB but you'll get a chance to experience the operating system before making the decision to install.

 

Linus Torvalds developed the Linux kernel as a hobby then got people from a news group involved in the development then he finally released the operating system under an open source license. The apps that run in Linux are mostly developed by independent groups.

 

BSD  was developed by the Berkeley University the operating system so much resembled Unix that the company sued Berkeley, after years of litigation the university won the court case. Then as a coup de grâce to Unix released the operating system under a BSD licence

 

Another interesting software was, Sun Microsystems purchased an office package named Star Office very similar to the Microsoft Office suite in some sort of retaliation Sun released its newly acquired office package under an open source license which kinda became a burr under Microsoft's saddle. The Star office package over the years has been renamed as the Open Office, the Office package has been ported to operate in a number of operating systems including Microsoft.

 

For those of you that use an accounting package, originally written for the Linux operating system but long ago has been ported to run on a number of operating systems including Microsoft and I'm told that gnucash has features that far surpass  the basic Quick.

 

Parts of the post that are underlined once clicked upon will lead you to the respective website.

 

 

Edited March 28, 2019 by bcgold

[bc.gold 3,403]

The SSD hard drive is an impressive performance booster no problems scrolling through large files and this is still with a measly 4 gig of ram because the seller send me the wrong ram.

 

 

[bc.gold 3,403]

On 3/28/2019 at 8:29 AM, Sarge said:

My last laptop was a Dell refurb bought from one of the Ebay contractors - lasted for almost 4 yrs before the drive finally died, along with most of my files. I had done several backups to my desktop pc, thankfully and was able to recover most of the data I'd thought was lost, but not all of what was really important.

 

Be careful with the lower brands on SSD's - while they work fine at first, they seem to degrade a lot faster than say a Samsung or one of the other premium brands. The off-breed drive in my old Dell gave zero warning, just failed to boot one morning and even with using stand-alone plugs/cables linked into another one I could not get anything off that drive - it was completely dead. RAM is great, but unless you work on improving the entire pipeline from the RAM, to the drive and back - you don't gain any real data processing. Processor speed isn't really that much of a factor - that pipeline is everything and on some boards you can replace both the North and South bridges to help resolve bottlenecks. Many of the newer multimedia-friendly pcs now using Win10 are using dual drives - one that is a SSD, the other is a HDD with at least 1TB of storage space. The SSD keeps the thing moving along at high speeds, then in the backround backs things up on the HDD - they work quite well, but the factory built units lack enough RAM to keep up for long. Those machines will beneft the most from large RAM upgrades as they already have the higher rated bridges and board built to handle heavy loads - such as processing media formatting.

 

I had originally purchased one of the premier Dell Inspiron models with the Intel 8th Gen i7 CPU units with dual drives like this -

https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-laptops/new-inspiron-17-3000/spd/inspiron-17-3780-laptop/NNlok7ws003s

Had it less than 24hrs - then returned it. No complaints about speed, but the way they built the pipeline it had a bad bottleneck that wouldn't allow it to shut down in a timely manner, which would have gotten much worse over time. Basically, all the backup processing was taking far too long - you could hear the HDD grinding away, trying to play catch up storing the files in their proper place. I also hated how the thing was laid out in relation to the keyboard and other basic design features - it was not all that friendly to use. I ended up going with a custom built Lattitude business class model that is much more rugged and running Win7 Pro 64 for now - working on switching to Linux slowly and I'm liking it so far. Those high-end multimedia friendly units are nice, but their build quality as far as the case and such is pretty poor - they feel flimsy and have a high failure rate of their boards from the whole case flexing, generally right after the warranty expires. Seems most also lack the old school plugs to interface into the chassis - almost no USB plugs and their disk drives are about as cheap as they can get them. I like this Lattitude, even despite the fact its the older, slower processor since its a 5th Gen i5 and the HDD in it is a slug for now. I will upgrade the chassis with a SSD here soon - but 1TB and bigger Samsung units are pretty expensive, although worth every penny. There is software and interface setups to run with my included USB 3.0 plug - which is as fast or faster than the processor. With a good quality cable - you can set these up to back up to a second HDD or SDD easily and they just run in the backround. This frees up the pipeline system much more efficiently - many servers are set up this way from what I understand. It can be fun building one of these things - but do your homework since mistakes can be costly and you end up with a machine that is as slow as molasses in Alaska.

 

Sarge

 

Server is pretty vague, print server file server, mail server or web server, when you get tired of building servers and want something a bit more interesting to plat with try Caine which is a top notch forensics tool.

 

After downloading it gets installed onto a USB or DVD disk and is run live.https://www.caine-live.net/