A modern laptop will likely perform much better than an old one. Unibody laptops with SSDs are fairly durable these days.
Modern web browsing has become fairly compute-intensive, as anyone with a dozen Chrome tabs open can tell you.
I have read a number of reviews of the new M1-based Macs. The most rave reviews are of the MacBook Air. It is ARM-based and extremely fast, but has no fan and most of the reviews said they had a hard time making it noticalbly warm, much less overheated. It’s also got about an 18 hour battery, which is kind of stunning. They can also drive a 6K monitor, so you can use them as a nice media PC (though a 6K monitor will cost a lot more than the computer). It’s not cheap (~$1K), but my experience with Mac laptops is that they last a fairly long time.
For a lot less than that, you can get an iPad Air, and it will do all the browsing/video streaming you want (get a bluetooth keyboard and a stand if you want to type anything lengthy, though).
Yes, I’m a fan of Apple hardware. I’m mostly blind, and their accessibility features are perfect for my needs (better and cheaper than Windows software), and I’m accustomed to the interface model. So sue me.
Newer laptops tend to come standard with IPS screens and SSDs, but they still try to pack a lot of electronics in a small space leading to overheating, are made of mostly plastic, have a smaller screen than desktops, and don’t last as long in general. If I can get four years out of laptop that’s a lot; after three years my Lenovo keyboard various keys stopped working but I was able to replace the keyboard for $100. Don’t buy a laptop if it’s just going to sit on your desk as opposed to taking it with you onto the backyard hammock or for travel.
I’m tech-daft but even I understand and agree with this. I, however, have no experience with the Raspberry pi, so I am not saying that it wouldn’t serve as well.
Because of my vision issues I primarily use an iPad Pro, which is a much larger screen, sharper and works just fine for streaming, YouTube, netflix. I don’t game. I spend 12-14 hours a day on it and it is 3 1/2 years old. I invested in a tempered glass screen cover and a UAG case. I have a Smart Keyboard for it but it is too much hassle-I wish I had gotten a hinged case with a keyboard instead (which is what I have on my 5 year old regular iPad, which I’m use when I want to pop it in my purse and go). Neither iPad has needed any repair or servicing.
Bought a new computer yesterday because my current computer says 100% disk usage, and I’m paranoid that it’s dying.
But my computer’s actually doing well right now, so I’m having second thoughts. But lots of people buy new phones or computers they don’t really need, right?
That either means you need to delete stuff more often (possibly after saving it to an external hard drive and/or the cloud), or you need a computer with a bigger hard drive. Or maybe you’ve just never emptied your Recycle Bin.
Are you looking at Task Manager and seeing 100% disk or are you looking at File Explorer and seeing it’s at 100%? Because these are different things. File Explorer saying you have no more disk space means you need to delete some shit like right now (and emptying the Recycle Bin is probably a real fast way of getting that down) but if it’s Task Manager saying that, well, that happens like ALL THE TIME because Windows is busily tying up resources for itself, or Chrome is doing the same. If you have Chrome running, try giving it the axe and see what that does to your usage. Also check to see if the OS is updating because when it’s getting ready to do that it hogs resources like mad.
Also, if your computer is not Windows based, plz to ignore this.
OTOH, the machine may just be laboriously processing updates or other file-heavy operation. I know our Windows 10 laptops (which are not anemic at all) get feel completely bogged down with 100% disk I/O utilization when they’re chugging through half-a-dozen updates. Usually that goes away after 30 minutes or so, or however long (and however many reboots) it takes to get back to “No Updates Available”.
Boy! I wish I had a dollar for every time my family or friends have asked me this exact same question. My standard responses:
Are you happy with your display monitor? If it looks good, great. Be happy that you can upgrade that easily and you don’t have to pay extra $$$ for a laptop with a good display.
How much RAM do you have? Make it 8 GB if it’s not that already and you’re running 64-bit. Easy to do yourself and probably less than $50.
How big is your hard drive? Is it an SSD? If it’s not an SSD, install one. Clean out all your unwanted data first. Most of the desktops I come across can get by just fine with a 250 GB SSD, and a nice one is less than $40. You may need a SATA cable and/or mounting bracket ($10). Then, buy a USB to SATA adapter ($18) and use your old HDD for back-ups.
The takeaway is…have at least 8 GB of RAM and use an SSD and you’ll probably be happy (after you clean all the unnecessary crap off your existing drive).
In 99% of situations, upgrading to an SSD is the single most impactful upgrade you can make, and its cost/benefit ratio is enormous.
You’ll still want to clean out/up your hard drive first, unless you’re planning on doing a full clean install rather than copying everything over, but you’ll be blown away by the increase in performance. It’s like magic.
Not completely, as of yet. In my experience, it could be getting to the end of it’s life. Next you will start to have files get corrupted, and possibly corruption of some OS files so your computer may not boot. If you need any data, now is the time to copy it off the drive.
My experience, this is not a death sentence for the drive, but it time to start taking precautions.
I got a new HP desktop at Costco back in June/20. Nice big screen, wireless keyboard and the hard drive is built into the bottom of the screen. While it’s done everything I need I was a bit taken aback by how small the hard drive was. I thought it had been advertised with a 1 TB drive but it’s not even close to that.
