It’s the circle of hardware: a good laptop will last no more than 4 years, before it starts getting outdated. However, it doesn’t usually take longer than 1-2 years of intensive use until a laptop starts acting tired and sluggish. Around this time, you can consider doing a makeover to refresh your machine to improve its performance and bring it closer, or even above, its original levels.
How do you know if it’s better to makeover your old laptop or if it’s better to just save money to get a new one? And if you choose the former option, how do you know which components to change for the highest cost effectiveness? This article will help you understand just that.
Should you give you laptop a makeover?
To know whether it’s worth giving your laptop a makeover or if it’s best to just just buy a new machine, you should be reasonably familiar with its hardware specs. Most importantly, you should look at the motherboard/processor power, since that are the core components that aren’t easily replaceable (not at reasonable cost).
At present time, anything below a quad core processor is just not worth tinkering with, with some high-end dual core laptops are still worth revamping. If you have a laptop that is just a couple years old and it’s recently started to lose the punch, do consider replacing the following components:
1) Adding more RAM
This is by far the simplest, least expensive and potentially meaningful update you should consider doing on any aging laptop. Adding 4 to 8GB or RAM will set you back no more than $50, and it will make a noticeable difference to the overall performance of the machine. This is especially true if your computer tends to get slow when you keep many tabs open in your browser.
Most modern laptops feature easy access to the RAM slots, making it very simple to add new modules or replace the old ones without need to call a technician. Just look in the back of your machine for the RAM bay; usually you’ll be able to access it without need to take apart the frame of the laptop.
2) Replacing Hard Drive
One of the main reasons why a laptop will start acting noticeably slower after a couple of years of regular use: the hard drive, especially if it’s a conventional HDD (hard disk drive). This component is made of small physical parts which tend to wear down after a while, significantly crippling the overall performance. Moreover, if you don’t format your hard drive regularly, the data will tend to get fragmented, further lowering the data transfer rates.
Replacing the hard drive on your laptop will instantly rejuvenate it, and since HDD’s standard capacities keep growing, you can easily install a bigger hard disk without breaking the bank. Also, similarly to the RAM bay, most laptops feature easy access to the Hard Drive, making it simple to do this update on a DIY basis. The cost for this upgrade should be under $100.
3) Switching to SSD drive
Rather than replacing the hard drive on your laptop, you may want to consider switching it with a SSD (solid state drive). This is the new generation of massive data storage, and even though it’s more expensive comparatively to a conventional HDD, it offers key benefits that will bring your laptop above and beyond its prime. As frame of reference, you should know that an SSD costs at least three times more than a HDD of comparable size, and performs at least three times faster.
SSD’s are more reliable, create nearly no heat, consume less energy (thus helping improve the battery autonomy of your laptop), and more importantly… they are drastically faster than a regular hard disk, both in reading and writing of data. Which means your laptop will boot faster and perform noticeably faster during all operations that involve accessing the disk, such as launching programs and copying files. This upgrade can be a bit costly (around $200 for a decent 256GB SSD), but it will likely bring the most noticeable improvements of all the changes suggested here, with the potential to make your laptop work notably faster than when it was brand new.
4) Replacing battery
If you’re doing your laptop a makeover and replacing the key parts mentioned above, you may as well want to consider getting a new battery. This won’t directly affect its performance, but it will likely add to its usefulness – especially if the original battery has fizzled to a fraction of its original autonomy. Plus, you can get a new battery of higher capacity than the original, which will give you extra time of running time per charge. A new battery would cost around $75, and it will help you regain the mobility your laptop once surely offered you. You can always contact a Battery tabs supplier as well, to help you work out what might be the problem and how you can solve it. It is always worth speaking to the professionals.
Final Thoughts
When your laptop starts to show signs of its age, there’s no need to rush and get a new one. Often, you’ll get a much better deal by doing a makeover and replacing the components suggested above. What’s best, you can make these changes incrementally for a much more comfortable investment of cash. And provided your laptop still has a strong engine (CPU) to back it up, these changes will make feel just as powerful as a brand new machine.