"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
On 16/01/2021 10:03, Harry Bloomfield wrote:
Brian Gaff (Sofa) used his keyboard to write :
Try an ssd first.

I have decided to leave it as is - an SSD of comparable size to my HDD
would make it a very expensive upgrade for what is now a battered old
machine. John's diagnostic method suggests I have more memory than I
need.

Since I never needed the TB of disk mine came with I removed it and put in
a 120GB SSD drive.

faster on booting. Obviously programs that dont use the disk run at the
same speed they always did....

It's by no means slow, but a boost in response would not go amiss.

Fixing one issue a while ago, I caused another one - I managed to damage
the one of the USB + microSD card connections to the m/board. I managed
to pick up a good, cheap used one a couple of weeks ago, all now
working - in the process I noticed a spare ram slot, which got me
wondering if it might be worth while my doubling the ram, as cheap
upgrade.

Getting more speed out of a computer is a case of diminishing returns.
Most code now on a single user computer fits comfortably in 8GB RAM with
no swapping.

But when you have more than one loaded all the time
so you have an instant switch to it when you want to
use it, its more complicated than that. And its much
better to have virtual OSs than do full reboots to do
something in another OS too and that takes lots of ram.

SSD improves boot time,

But those with a clue dont boot much at all. I only do
it very infrequently, I suspend instead of shutting down.

but not running speed, and even upping cache and cores in the CPU doesn't
speed most stuff up that much.

And it doesnt really make any sense to do anything
much with a clapped out old laptop like that.