We live in such a throw away society now. Often it is cheaper and easier to purchase something new instead of getting something repaired, even if we may want to keep it. It’s not just computer tech either, it’s pretty much everything in our lives from shoes to major household appliances. It’s actually really sad, especially when you start considering the landfill situation! In my grandparents day, they spent a little extra money on something, knowing the quality was better and you had things repaired because it was cheaper to do so. Today, the opposite seems to be true.
Recently, I was helping out a friend with a second-hand notebook. When you’re not in the position to purchase something new, you really should consider this as a great option. Lets face it, if you’re not editing photos, videos and playing computer games, most of us only use our computers for browsing the internet, emails & some general office work. This is not really taxing work for the CPU and RAM. Your computer
however takes a long time to boot up and log in to windows. So you get into the habit of turning it on and going to make a coffee or tea. For the most part, your computer still meets your needs. Does this sound familiar? What if I told you there was a cost effective way to better your experience with your old computer and maybe get to use it a little longer? Well there is!
Simply upgrading the disk drive in your computer, from the old style Hard Drive (HDD) with spindles & moving parts to a new Solid State Drive (SSD) with no moving parts, will increase the speed and responsiveness of your computer in a very noticeable way! (see benchmark test below)
So back to my friend. I purchased a second-hand Dell Precision M4600 notebook. It’s probably around 4 years old, it has a decent CPU i7, enough RAM and a good graphics card. I wiped it and upgraded it from Windows 7 to Windows 10, when Microsoft still had the free upgrade offer. It was running fine, and certainly would have been much faster than the ancient one currently in use. Being someone that doesn’t often work on computers that don’t have an SSD anymore, I noticed a real difference. It was still pretty slow to boot up and load in to windows. I made the executive decision to replace the HDD with a brand new SSD. Some ship with migration software, but if yours doesn’t there are free ones available. I used Macrium Reflect (its free) to copy the original disk to the new SSD. Copy complete I fitted the new SSD into the notebook and away she raced! It now boots up almost instantly. I’m talking in under a minute here, so unless you’re coffee machine is right next to your computer, there’s no time to go make that coffee while it starts up!
I know how much faster an SSD drive can be, but it still made me marvel just the same. It also prompted me to share the experience with you all. Some of you may be wondering what to do with your old computer or maybe you need something a little quicker, but just can’t afford something new right now. If there is one thing you should do, it’s replace your existing Hard Drive with an SSD. You will thank me for it, I promise. While it’s true SSDs are still a bit more expensive and smaller, you can pick one up for around $100-$250 depending on the capacity size you go for. The larger the capacity, the higher the cost. You’ll find a 250gb SSD is the ideal cost vs capacity price point currently.
Here are some benefits of using an SSD:
- No moving parts, allows for faster transfer of data. (You could liken the tech to the memory card in your camera, if you still have one of those!)
- System Start-up & booting to windows is exponentially faster
- Programs will also launch faster and be more responsive
- Windows search results compile faster
- Less power consumption means increased battery life
- Shock resistant
So an SSD has a few good things going for it. There are a few other things to take into consideration though like:
- The more you write to it the shorter its lifespan (But you still have a while. Estimates say writing 10gb of data daily to it will still give you a lifespan of around 10 years)
- Not ideal for large capacity storage of photos or videos
- It won’t make websites load faster, this is based on other variables
Lets say you have a computer with a 1Tb HDD. You store lots of photos, movies and videos on this Hard Drive. While a notebook is limited to only having the one HDD, which you will be replacing with an SSD, most desktop computer will allow you the option of having more than one disk drive. So you can get a smaller SSD to load windows on making it your main system drive and keep your larger capacity HDD in there for storage of all your favourite things. There’s really no drawback here.
Why not hold off on adding to the electronic waste pile and give your not so old computer a new lease on life?
I really can’t emphasise enough the difference you will see just by upgrading this one bit of hardware. Of course, if the software on your computer is suffering and in a bad way from years of neglect or recent malware devastation, your time will be better spent starting fresh with your SSD. You may be tempted to just copy your existing HDD to the SSD, but know that you will be copying all those software issues along with it. It will be more time consuming, but its definitely worth the extra time to install windows and your other programs fresh in this scenario.
From a business perspective, if your current staff computers are sitting at the 3-4 year age mark, upgrading to an SSD is something you should definitely consider if your IT budget is limited. Most computers within that era have more than enough CPU and RAM power to handle your standard business applications. However, you’ll be saving wasted time in a number of ways and your staff members will become more productive and less frustrated not having to wait for their computer to catch up!
The take away from this article? Yes, it is worth upgrading your computer, desktop or notebook, with an SSD. You should do it now!! Avoid the unnecessary wait..