What are some good ways of knowing whether or not I'll need to replace my laptop for college?

[Kristofer_2]

So it sounds pretty self-explanatory, LOL... But, I was curious as to what I could do to determine whether I will need a new laptop for college (this fall; fall 2018). Does anybody have any ideas? It's getting a bit slow, and it is probably four or five years old... But, I would definitely be willing to throw in an SSD for some extra speed, upgrade the RAM (if even possible), and of course, reinstall the OS... What do you people think? Obviously going to college = low budget. LOL!

 

[Corwin65]

Full laptop specs will allow us to give you an informed answer.

 

[tazeps]

we need details of your current laptop to make informed/detailed comments. Although an SSD is definitely recommended. even if a small one coupled with bigger HDD for bulk storage.

 

[geofelt]

I have replaced the slow hard drive on many laptops with very gratifying results.
I used the Samsung ssd migration aid to clone the hard drive to a Samsung ssd.
No need to reinstall anything.

If you have 4gb of ram, upgrading to 8gb is probably worth it.

If your battery life is insufficient for your needs, that is probably the reason to replace the laptop

 

[lxgoldsmith]

college requires more walking.

If your laptop is too heavy to pack up and carry around every day, you probably need a new laptop.

given the 5-year time frame, it's most likely that your pc is slowing down because the hdd is wearing out due to its long life. A new ssd would make your laptop faster and your life easier.

If you do shop for a ssd, keep in mind that the life of a ssd is directly proportional to {(sector-endurance * size) / (usage / yr)} rather than the physical wear on the drive. It's a good idea to upgrade memory when buying a ssd, since your system uses your storage as virtual memory when it runs low on physical memory.

It's generally recommended to do a clean installation of the OS when switching from hdd to ssd.

 

[geofelt]

Light weight is a very good thing if you will be carrying a laptop around.

I have never had an issue with using the Samsung ssd migration app to move a windows C drive from a hard drive to a laptop.
I have no idea why such a simple change should require a windows reinstall.

Endurance is no longer an issue with modern SSD devices on a desktop environment.
A SSD will be long obsolete before it wears out.

 

[lxgoldsmith]

Endurance is no longer an issue with modern SSD devices on a desktop environment.
A SSD will be long obsolete before it wears out.

It isn't an issue unless you do something like writing a 3GB folder every 5 minutes, which wears out a 500GB ssd (mx500) in just over half a year of usage. Most people don't do that, but it's important to know in case you were using the ssd as virtual memory or running a minecraft server off of it.