Expected speed increase due to SSD

M

I have 4 year old Dell laptop with the following config:

Intel C2D 7200 (2 GHz), 3GB RAM, Win Vista Home Premium, nVidia 8400GS, 120GB 5400 RPM HDD.

The lappy is mostly use for office work with nearly zero gaming.

I am planning to unleash new life into this config by replacing my HDD with Intel 520 series 128GB SSD. I expect this lappy to fulfill my needs for another 2-3 years (assuming other H/W remains intact).

Please let me know if this is a good decision. What speed increase should I expect by upgrading to the SSD?

bootup time & softwares will launch faster.

Faster boot time and app launch as he said, but apps themselves won't run faster. When processing a large spreadsheet etc, its done in the memory(RAM).

If you really want to upgrade, upgrade the OS! Vista is such a nightmare.

M

Monk said:
If you really want to upgrade, upgrade the OS! Vista is such a nightmare.

Upgrading to Win 7 will atleast cost me Rs. 4.5k and since my H/W is old and not very fast I will still spend some money on faster component (SSD in this case). This means I will end up spending nearly 15k on lappy which is basically 4 years old. Is it a good idea?

spend on OS. if you later change laptop, you can buy one without OS at cheaper rate and go with the same OS. also SSD price is coming down, performance is increasing with launch of new SSD series (cause of new controller). adding an SSD to this old horse is not worth the performance gain. of course MS Office will launch 2 second faster but not worth it if you ask me.

M

Sam said:
spend on OS. if you later change laptop, you can buy one without OS at cheaper rate and go with the same OS. also SSD price is coming down, performance is increasing with launch of new SSD series (cause of new controller). adding an SSD to this old horse is not worth the performance gain. of course MS Office will launch 2 second faster but not worth it if you ask me.

For 4.5k I will get Win 7 OEM which means I can't shift it to new lappy. For retail version of Win 7 I will spend around 6.5k. Should I go for it and leave SSD aside?

J

No point adding an ssd to such an aging machine. Go for the os instead.

R

Intel 520 is a very good choice, you will see good boosts

monkey said:
For 4.5k I will get Win 7 OEM which means I can't shift it to new lappy. For retail version of Win 7 I will spend around 6.5k. Should I go for it and leave SSD aside?

You can use the 30 days trial W7.

monkey said:
For 4.5k I will get Win 7 OEM which means I can't shift it to new lappy. For retail version of Win 7 I will spend around 6.5k. Should I go for it and leave SSD aside?

with W7 there won't be huge gain too. So it all boils down to what kind of performance gain you want. Fast bootup, app launches soon as you click, SSD but price is coming down. By 2013's end you can have an SSD for much less. should be double capacity for same price which includes performance gain too. For overall performance increase, Windows 8 is more close to a tablet OS, which means Windows 7 is good till say W9 comes out. Go for OS now and maybe go for a new laptop by 2013.

Be happy with your present config for one more year. Buy SSD after that.

About OS: think about changing it.

Don't do anything for now. Save your money for future.

Getting SSD is like fixing Nitro Oxide on a car, through it will give you a better pickup and or speed boost but it will not do any benefit to the engine it self.
Vista is such a resource hog, its like using computer at 20FPS.

M

I have actually been using Win XP Pro on this lappy for now (though it came loaded with Vista). I thought of using Vista with SSD for some extended life as HDD is slow for my liking. Though many have suggested to go for Win 7 I am not sure if it would speed my lappy by noticeable margin (over XP). Also I will not be upgrading my lappy for another 2-3 years (and will definitely not upgrade to Windows 8) so no use in waiting for new ivy-bridge based launches with Win 8 onboard.

With this in mind please let me know what should I do.

Well atleast win 7 will give you a much better interface. I still vote for nothing or if you do mant to buy something then buy OS.

Even I suggest you to get nothing and save your money for future.....