Just been given a free laptop! What to do with it...

Stringy · 19 Jan 2017 at 11:14

Colleague at work told me he was going to throw out a Laptop that he'd never used (!!!) so I told him I'd have it for the price of a couple of bottles of wine.

Spec:
Dell Inspiron n5110
i5 2410m
4GB RAM
500GB HDD
Windows 7
1366x768 Resolution 15"
2 x USB 3.0/1 x USB 2.0/1 x USB2/eSATA
Ethernet
VGA port
Lots of weight

It's no slouch in terms of general performance (I thought it would be a poor Celeron or something, not an i5!) I currently have the following planned for it:
Windows 10 Upgrade
4GB extra RAM (~£20)
The HDD looks like a PITA to replace so I probably won't bother doing anything with it.

Can anyone think of anything else I can do with it to bring it closer to a modern laptop? Can screens be changed or anything like that?

Stringy · 19 Jan 2017 at 13:26

Rroff said:
Changing the screen is usually quite a job with a good chance of doing damage to the laptop if you aren't familiar with stripping down that model.

If the HDD isn't easily changed looking into caching options might be worthwhile.

By caching options do you mean this or is it something else?

Stringy · 19 Jan 2017 at 14:09

skyripper said:
I've not got one of those laptops in front of me.

Nope

Thanks though.

Stringy · 19 Jan 2017 at 16:19

Rroff said:
I was meaning more like hybrid caching (one of the USB ports apparently doubles as esata? which might give some options) - on one of my older laptops I was using a high speed SD card as a cache for the HDD with reasonable results.

Any links to a guide or similar to give me pointers? Drawing a blank with Google.