by KateWild 56 Replies latest forum tech-support
I am at PCworld now. I have picked the red one. Thanks for all your advice.
I didn't get the one with the SSD in the end my friend who is here with me said I don't need it.
Its a red Hewlett Packard for £329.00, fully set up for an extra £35, rip off but within my budget. So I can post on it now lol xx
It has an Intel processor 8gb memory and 1Tb hard drive.
You're friend has given you some rubbish advise I am afraid - the SSD one will be around 10-20 times faster. I would strongly advise you to take it back and exchange it. It is THAT much better.
Over time your non-SSD drive will become "fragmented", this means it will get slower and slower, in a few years it will be so slow you will assume you need a new computer. You can keep the same speed from day 1 with an SSD.
Macs also work out cheaper overall, I have a 2008 MacBook Pro that is as quick as the day I got it and never had a problem, runs on the latest software too. My workhorse Mac Pro machine at work that gets 40-60 use a week is 9 years old, and again, as good as the day I bought it.
Both have been upgraded to SSDs, by the way, which made them 10-20 times faster.
Also that £35 is for absolutely nothing. You don't need to "set up" a computer beyond type in your name when you turn it on for the first time!
I didn't get the one with the SSD in the end my friend who is here with me said I don't need it.
Your friend is an utter idiot. You should kill them or at least don't get computer advice from them in future. And they are willing to give you diff advice but their expertise doesn't extend to helping you type your name into a new computer? Geez.
As zombie dub has already said, an SSD is THE best thing to speed up practically any PC and the best value investment you can make. I would take an SSD over a faster processor any day. Take it back and swap it for one with an SSD. A decent SSD drive with all the capacity you need is the exact same price as the slow large capacity drives they peddle so your machine should not cost you one penny more.
A computer with an SSD in it should boot up from cold in about 5 seconds to being usable. How long does yours take? If it takes much longer when it's brand spanking new, then it's not good enough (and it will get slower).
Here's a post that explains it, the key bit is the table showing how "computer times" for various components translate into something more understandable. Note the hard drive difference: it equates to something taking a year (regular hard drive) instead of a day (SSD). That is how big the perf difference is. And the large capacity hard drives typically shovelled out in PC World / HP machines are very often the slowest of the slow (they even still sell 5400 RPM drives, 7200 is the minimum, 10K or above is the minimum to still use spinning rust).
https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-infinite-space-between-words/
My friend actually also advised me I shouldn't buy a laptop today. He told me to think about it for a week, and do more research. He told me I was being too impetuous. Okay I will return it and say I made a mistake.
My old laptop seems to be really fast tonight, for some reason.
When I switched to Chrome AND replaced my Windows operating system with the new Chromebook notebook laptop--my world suddenly blossomed into a paradise on Earth!
The world is a beautiful place now. No regrets.
Solid State Drive takes mere seconds. Windows took minutes.
I open the lid and 5 seconds later, I'm on the web.
That's my two cents. I tried Windows 10 and the Edge. I wouldn't go back to that world. I really wouldn't.
Unless your current PC is very old the hardware is unlikely to be a problem. Unless you know for sure that you need faster hardware, you may find that a replacement PC ends up little quicker once you have reloaded everything.
The best thing to do is to find out *what* is slow and *why*. Sometimes a component upgrade can transform things or, very often, just resetting the Windows installation to factory new (if you are on 8 or 10) or re-installing (if you are on an older version) will make a PC like new again.
Windows is especially bad at collecting crap along the way (including malware) and it can really make a PC chug.
That's what makes Chrome and Mac's so much better by comparison - easier to keep things running ticketty-boo.
Thanks Simon, I will return the new one and do as you advise, and what my friend advised too. Thanks
Kate - it depends what you want to do with it. If you've got shed loads of pics and music to store then the laptop you have bought wil be just fine. SSD drives of a large capacity are still pricey and not yet in £300 laptops.
It's horses for courses - if you just surf the web and store a few docs then a small capacity SSD based laptop will be a good idea.
if you need the storage then you'll need a non-SSD drive to get the capacity.
Don't get too hung up on the techy talk - it's a laptop ffs - it will do what you need it to do.
At the budget end of the market you are right to stick with a famous brand. HP, dell, Lenovo et al will all do the job, and most importantly you'll be able to download any software or drivers you may need later on.
8gb and 1tb is fine.
Thanks Landy for a bit of a balanced view. And who really gives a shit if I need to make a coffee while it boots up, it's not as if Armageddon is coming soon and going to interrupt my internet experience,
My photos are on the pCloud I have 500 something free on it. So storage isn't an issue.
I delayed taking it back when I read this a few hours ago.
Btw Simon I told my friend you called him an utter idiot and he called you a name in return. But it will breach posting guidelines. So I will send it to you in a PM. You can probably guess he is a typical scouser lol hahaha xx His name is Simon too
