Is it worth buying a new 15 6200u laptop for my needs? I have Core 2 Duo 8700, would a SSD be better?

[vivelo]

I have a Fujitsu d9510 laptop with 4gb ram, core 2 duo p8700 2.53ghz. My uses are browsing classifieds and news and I play Word of Tanks (no other games that are graphic heavy). I can happily run 6+ you tube videos at the same time without a hitch, but I read the dailymail website and use tabs, once I open 5 articles in tabs, my trusty 8 year old laptop starts feeling it and slows down. It happens on some classifieds sites when I have 10 or more tabs open.
My question is, would a laptop with an i5 6200u do the same or happily open many more tabs without slowing down? I have a newer AMD laptop I bought when my notebook died in the USA, its 3 years old and is worse (it was cheap) and I got conned in to the Surface RT which is only useful as a place mat. I love my Fujitsu, it doesn't miss a beat, but I think some websites are getting too heavy for it. It has more or less the same features of whats on the market in my budget, but most importantly it has built in 3G and I have an excellent data plan of unlimited for 6 months for £20!
Or should I buy a SSD? The only option I didn't buy when I bought my Fujitsu was the hybrid SSD, it can have upto 4gb I think, but was told it was pointless. Should I swap out the hard drive to a SSD? I ask because I watched the device manager and it was reading 15-20% on the hardrive as it loaded dailymail pages and my ram was 3.6gb used. I think 4gb ram is the max it can have and I think there is virtual ram that uses the hard drive?

In Short, Should I buy a new laptop, I5 6200u is my max budget or will a SSD solve my browsing? The Fujitsu already boots quick enough running window 10. Oh, it has a finger pointer (not sure of its name, little joystick in the keyboard), I need it or playing world of tanks is impossible, this has led me to a Lenovo with a i5 6200u, its the cheapest I can find with the joystick.

I'm still getting over 3 hours out of the battery, but the SSD will improve that. Unfortunately, upgrading to Windows 10, I have lost control of the action buttons that allow me to put the computer in power saving mode by shutting off a core or something and screen etc.

I love my Fujitsu, but is it time to retire it?

 

[jsmithepa]

The numbers of things you can do and the number of open tabs is constrained by CPU bandwidth availability and RAM.

Having SSD really doesn't help you with the above, it just loads things faster and make your overall interaction with it smoother.

 

[dudeman509]

I've got an i7-5600u laptop for work (a generation older than the 6200u, and a slightly higher-clocked i5-u series). I am very impressed with its multitasking abilities. It won't even flinch at multiple browser tabs being opened, and can handle quite a bit while returning crazy battery life and creating very little heat.

Blows my i7-640M (also 2-core) out of the water, but my i7-2720QM will leave both of them in the dust with a heavy workload.

 

[CelicaGT]

As stated an SSD will help with general disk related things, boot up and loading applications. They can also help when you exceed system RAM and hit virtual memory (many tabs open). I have an old Dell Inspiron 1545 with a Pentium T9800 and a cheapo SSD and it flies with regular tasks, still chugs a bit when the CPU gets flogged (Win10 btw). I also have an SP3 with the 4300u and a Macbook (no comment) with the m3 something or other, both machines handle everything with class, the Surface plays Diablo 3 not too bad. I even ran Final Fantasy 14 on it just to see....it runs! Like a slideshow but heck not bad for an 'unsupported' IGP. Does Minecraft and Kerbal Space Program ok too.

 

[vivelo]

Thanks guys for the answers.

I just don't understand why certain websites are a pain. I have the habit of loading the pages I want to look at and then look through them instead of opening and closing constantly. I would of thought youtube videos would be heavier than say the dailymail website.

As I say, the only game I play is world of tanks, I use to have a xbox 360 and it was all I played on that. Its plays just as well and the FPS in the corner is in the 40's, which isn't too bad? I will see if I can download minecraft and try it.

Win 10 is heavier than 7 on the battery and I lost an hour's use according to the icon. It is an old laptop, but my Acer with the AMD looks more tired and I have hardly ever used it (mouse pad paint worn off and key letters dull, but my Fujitsu is good still, but it did cost 3 times the Acer back in the day).

Could someone with a newer processor go to the dailymail.co.uk website as a test and see how many tabs they can open and see if it slows down, I can open 5 or 6 happily, but after that the fan come on hard and switching tabs is really slow. It will give me an idea if its worth upgrading to a new laptop. I only use Edge, I'm not a google fan and like to keep to just Microsoft because I have it in my head that if its all made by the same people, it will work best (probably wrong, but hey).

Thanks in advance.

 

[vivelo]

As stated an SSD will help with general disk related things, boot up and loading applications. They can also help when you exceed system RAM and hit virtual memory (many tabs open). I have an old Dell Inspiron 1545 with a Pentium T9800 and a cheapo SSD and it flies with regular tasks, still chugs a bit when the CPU gets flogged (Win10 btw). I also have an SP3 with the 4300u and a Macbook (no comment) with the m3 something or other, both machines handle everything with class, the Surface plays Diablo 3 not too bad. I even ran Final Fantasy 14 on it just to see....it runs! Like a slideshow but heck not bad for an 'unsupported' IGP. Does Minecraft and Kerbal Space Program ok too.

I don't think I can have more ram with the P8700 processor? I will check. The ram status at slowdown is just over 3.2GB, so not full. This was my thought, if I bought a 128GB SSD, it would act like more ram but faster because at the slow down point, my hard drive is working at 25% and the only program open is Edge.

I had a look on eBay last night and I can get a 4GB SSD that works as hybrid with the HDD. Used ones are just a few quid and I'm guessing not many laptops used them. I was told not to bother at the store when ordering my Fujitsu.

This is my gripe with whats on the market, I'm not getting anything new feature wise, finger print scanner I don't have (I have a security card and slot, but never use it), but everything else I got already and screen resolutions are the same. I'm going to lose my 3g (I can use my phone, but there are two huge antennas in the screen frame which gets me a good signal where my phone doesn't) and I spend a lot of time on my boat, so its very useful and there are other things like my GPS plugging in for charting, I won't get the serial ports with the Thinkpad. So I will still be taking my Fujitsu or end up upgrading the electronics on my boat too usb.

Its a P socket processor, is there a better processor I can drop in that will make a difference?

 

[vivelo]

I've got an i7-5600u laptop for work (a generation older than the 6200u, and a slightly higher-clocked i5-u series). I am very impressed with its multitasking abilities. It won't even flinch at multiple browser tabs being opened, and can handle quite a bit while returning crazy battery life and creating very little heat.

Blows my i7-640M (also 2-core) out of the water, but my i7-2720QM will leave both of them in the dust with a heavy workload.

Seems like you know your processors, I have a P8700 and it was the best Fujitsu offered at the time. What would be the best to upgrade to? Must be loads on eBay cheap and worth a go?

 

[vivelo]

Just looked at the spec sheet and it says the intel® Core™2 Duo processor T9600 (2.8 GHz, 6 MB, 1066 MHz) was an option. Mine is the intel® Core™2 Duo processor P8700 (2.53 GHz, 3 MB, 1066 MHz). Will it make a difference?

 

[vivelo]

I can have up to 8GB of ram. I think 2GB cards was the biggest when new. So I am going to buy a couple of sticks of 4GB ram and see if it improves. I can get a T9600 processor off ebay, either £10 from China or £30 from the UK. Will the extra 3mb of L2 cache and .140ghz extra speed make much difference? How difficult is it to change them? do they just pop out and push in.

I think I am heading to the shops later to get a 128gb ssd

Final question, Am I wasting aprox £60 making these changes (ram, processor and SSD) to get another couple of years use out of it, or should I just bite the bullet and buy the thinkpad?

 

[dudeman509]

Just looked at the spec sheet and it says the intel® Core™2 Duo processor T9600 (2.8 GHz, 6 MB, 1066 MHz) was an option. Mine is the intel® Core™2 Duo processor P8700 (2.53 GHz, 3 MB, 1066 MHz). Will it make a difference?

No. Very little noticeable difference. My C2D became quite a bit more usable with a small SSD and RAM upgrade (2->4).

A test install with a different browser may get you what you're after in the first place (try Firefox - less of a resource hog).

RAM would probably help enormously.

 

[CelicaGT]

I've got 4 gigs in that little Dell, by all accounts my use is light so I never hit virtual memory. I've found the old stuff is cheap, I bought that T9800 for $15....new still in the original box. I doubled the RAM from 2 to 4 for $25 and the SSD was $45 all from Amazon. It's strange I have many modern machines but it gives me great satisfaction to use this machine old as it is.

 

[velo3100]

From what everyone is saying it seems that the best option is to get more ram and an ssd. This should increase performance for the things you are doing. the i5 cpu is overkill for what you need.