Upgrading old computers

Memory

When I joined my current company, I was given a new PC with 4 GB of ram and Windows 7.  Those two things didn't add up very well, especially since I was using SAP GUI and other tools - so one of the first things I did was upgrade the memory to 8 GB.  (Later I upgraded the RAM again to 16 GB).  In fact, mentioning this to our CEO prompted the company to but additional memory for all of the company PCs.  It just doesn't make sense to sit there frustrated while your computer churns away swapping memory to and from disk, when that frustration can be greatly reduced just by upgrading the RAM.

SSD and Other

My company recently announced that any computers older than three years old would be eligible for upgrade (including mine) to a new PC.  I thought about it for a few minutes and figured "A new low end laptop won't be significantly better than a 3.5 year old low end laptop".  If the new laptop would be a core 3 GHz quad core i7 or something, then the situation might be different - but more likely it would be whatever Lenovo $500 could buy today.

So I made the following suggestion "How about instead of buying a new PC, we just upgrade the one I have.  It would cost less, and probably be faster.  Then we can get a few more years of life out of this one."  Management agreed, so I took a look at what else I might be able to upgrade.  The truth is, I also didn't want to have to re-install everything again either.

The first obvious item was the disk.  The size was reasonable at 500 GB, but the speed... not so much.  At home I have an i7 MacBook Air, and it seems like a rocket ship compared to my sluggish computer at work.  (And it's not the processor, because even the MacBook 2015 seems much faster.  It isn't just the OS either, as Windows 10 on my home PC laptop is much faster than my work PC).  Anyway I decided to upgrade the disk to an SSD.  Surprisingly, I could get 500 GB worth of SSD for  only around US $200 on Amazon Japan, so I went with that.  

The upgrade process seemed simple:

1. Attach the SSD via an external case using USB

2. Clone the system to the SSD using the included software (on CD ROM)

3. Swap the SSH into the computer and reboot

4. Install the Samsung Magician Software and off we go

I installed the software, though using a CD had some kind of nostalgic feel.  As the noisy CD-ROM spun up, I realized this was about the 3rd time I had used it in as many years.

Next, I brought a an external USB 3 SATA case I had from home, put the SSD in it, and plugged it into the computer.  I launched the cloning software and it started doing its thing - but it was very slow.  After a while, I found the reason for the slowness.  This model of PC, despite being released in 2012, was lacking USB 3!  Using USB 2 to transfer 500 GB is not an enticing process.  Nonetheless, I was patient and waited all day for the transfer to complete.  When it finally did, the software displayed 99% on the completion graph and then gave an error about updating the partition map.  what?!  That has to be the worst user experience ever.  If it had to be redone, there should be an option to only redo the partition adjustment, but there wasn't, so in order to try again, I would have to re-do everything again and wait another six hours or so.  The help wasn't helpful at all, and suggested running chkdsk.  I did, and there were no problems.  I have to say I was extremely disappointed.  The entire reason I bought the Samsung drive was because it included the cloning software and didn't want to waste time messing around with my work computer.  Next time I will buy the Crucial drive.  

I ended up downloading another free disk cloning software, and re-started the cloning process.  After about 3.5 hours, the clone was done, and so I swapped the disks and rebooted.

Amazingly it worked, but chkdsk ran, and some applications which I had open during the cloning seemed to have their database corrupted. 

I installed the included Samsung magician software, and some options didn't work correctly.  The update feature claimed I had the latest version, which turned out to be a lie.  I later downloaded an updated version from Samsung's web site and everything seemed to work fine after updating.  (The issue seemed to be lack of Windows 10 support).  So again, I am not terribly impressed with the "simple" setup procedure.

Sadly, after all that work, the computer doesn't seem that much faster.  I suppose that even with a fast drive, perhaps a Celeron is just so slow that it becomes a bottleneck even during tasks that aren't processor intensive.  The slowest times are much faster (which is good), but the average performance doesn't seem a lot different.  

Nonetheless, I think switching to an SSD was also good, as hard drives on laptops tend to get slower until they stop working, whereas SSD drives aren't so sensitive to being lugged around.

Next, I set out to fix the USB 3 support.  The PC has an ExpressCard slot, so I bought an ExpressCard to USB 3 adapter.  I had read somewhere that Windows 10 was designed to support all Windows 7 and Windows 8 drivers - but sadly the drivers included with the ExpressCard didn't seem to work well, and it usually shows with the famous orange triangle in the device manager.  I really don't know why it even needs drivers - Isn't USB 3 supported for multiple chipsets out of the box on windows 10?  Wouldn't you use one of those chipsets if you were building an add-on card for PCs?  I will see if I can find another adapter later, but since I don't use USB on this PC much, it shouldn't matter that much.

Oh well.  Next up, wireless.  This PC has only Wireless N, and while one can buy Wireless AC cards for ~$20, it apparently has a BIOS whitelist.  For obvious reasons I am not going to hack the BIOS of a company computer that is not even my property, but I am not sure it would be worth while to spend the ~$70 it would cost for a Lenovo branded card that should work.  On the other hand, since I am often using a wired connection or connecting via LTE, using AC over N might not make a large difference. Even so, the main issue is that the built-in WiFi doesn't support even 5 GHz WiFi n, which means that when I go to a client site where there are 400 people using their own WiFi routers, things get mighty slow sometimes due to interference.  Again, no 5 GHz in a 2012 machine?  Seriously Lenovo?

CD-ROM - Yes, I think this should be removed and swapped for another SATA bay to hold a hard drive or SSD for back-up.  This just adds weight.

Screen - The screen on this laptop is one of the worse I have used.  I suppose the idea is "Well if you can see Excel...", but it's seriously bad.  Again, after using my Macbook at home, it seems even worse.  The contrast is bad, the viewing angles are bad, the colors are dull and washed out, and the resolution is mediocre.  Still, there's not much that can be done on this front.

Processor - This sucks, plain and simple, but I don't think it can be changed without swapping out the motherboard.  (Apparently there are i3 Motherboards, which I assume would be noticeably better than the Celeron, however that is too drastic of an upgrade for my work computer).  

Size - This laptop is large, and kind-of hollow feeling.  Again, not much that can be done.

Audio/WebCam - Not really relevant for a work computer.  I do use the audio for WebEx meetings, and I do wish that the audio jack worked with headset microphones like the ones on the Mac.  

Battery - The battery life isn't great, but there probably isn't much that can be done about that.  (Though using the SSD will certainly help some).  I suppose I could buy a 9 cell battery.