Is it worth the upgrade?

[wjonesy]

Hi
I currently have an Acer Aspire 5810T

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00292BG5A/ref=asc_df_B00292BG5A4662960?smid=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&tag=googlecouk06-21&linkCode=asn&creative=22206&creativeASIN=B00292BG5A

Intel Core Duo SU9400 1.4GHz
320GB Hard Drive
4GB RAM
32-bit Windows Vista

I take care of my computers but this laptop is lagging a little. I know the processor isn't very fast, But would an upgrade to an ssd or hybrid drive with 64-bit Windows 7 have a noticeable difference? Also perhaps 8GB RAM? It would be overkill for my needs but seen as its only £40 now seems like good bang for my buck.

Any help is much appreciated.
wjonesy

 

[AMD X6850]

It depends on what is causing the lagging.
If you hard drive is the bottleneck here, an SSD would certainly be a worthwhile upgrade.
Even if the hard drive isn't the problem, an SSD can noticeably cut down on startup and loading times.

8GB RAM would need a 64-bit Operating system to be utilised, since 32-bit can only address something like 3.3GB. So a RAM upgrade would only be useful if you can change/upgrade your OS to a 64-bit one.

Whether the 8GB ram would help your computer - that depends on what you use this machine for. If it's the processor slowing the computer, the extra RAM won't do much to stop it.

 

[WR2]

Hello wjonesy;

With a 32bit version of Win7 the RAM upgrade would be wasted on your laptop.
And even with a 64bit version and 8GB RAM you'd not be able to notice any performance improvement.

A SSD would only affect storage access times. It would give you faster boot-up, and faster program load times. But overall, it wouldn't make you laptop noticeably faster and probably would not fix the lagging your mention.

Have you done a 'clean' install of your OS lately?

 

[wjonesy]

I dont have the disc for my OS so cant do a 'clean' install, or can I??

I am going to change to 64 bit and do a full install of windows 7.

Dont think I will go for 8GB RAM

 

[WR2]

You should be able to do a clean install using the hidden recovery partition on the hdd.

 

[WR2]

Did your laptop ship with Vista?
If so, you probably want to hold off on doing that clean install till you figure out what you need to do.

 

[wjonesy]

Yes it shipped with vista. I dont know whats causing the slowness. Also windows explorer crashes and restarts at least twice a day. So many reasons why that happens I dont know what to do about it.