SSD or new laptop?

The Game · 18 Apr 2011 at 12:01

Hi,

As I mentioned I one of my previous posts, I am thinking of upgrading my HDD in my Sony Vaio VGN-N38E laptop.

The HDD has started making screeching noises & locking up often, was thinking of a
OCZ Vertex ssd but don’t know what would be best to go with for this laptop.

Don’t know if I should save the money I was going to spend on a ssd for this machine, & upgrade to a new laptop.

Opinions on whether to upgrade the hdd , or upgrade to a new up to date laptop would be much appreciated.

Don’t know where we are with Sandy Bridge laptops, have some of the top brands started to release any yet.

Any recommendations for a new laptop would also be grate.

Thanks.

Dokinator · 18 Apr 2011 at 12:06

If your laptop at the moment is running smoothly with no fault (Apart from this broken HDD) then I don't see the need to upgrade laptop, so I would recommend just buying a SSD. If you are unsure about this, how much are you willing to spend on a new laptop?

The Game · 18 Apr 2011 at 12:53

I paid £500 for this machine in 2007, so possibly could stretch to £500/£6000 if the new machine was worth it.

Would ideally like as up to date a laptop for around this price as possible, I am finding my current machine struggles with lots of things & is quite slow spec’s below:

CPU: 1.86Ghz
Ram: 2GB
Vista 32-bit home premium
Hdd: 102GB

Have heard of a new Dell on other posts, but don’t know if that is worth it.

Was planning on building a desktop as a lot of forum members will probably know, but was put off with all the motherboard problems with Sandy Bridge.

Don’t know whether to get new laptop first, & do a desktop build when something else comes out at a later date.

JonJ678 · 18 Apr 2011 at 13:14

SSDs do really good things for laptops. Highly recommended.

Dokinator · 18 Apr 2011 at 13:18

Now this may be okay for you as an upgrade to your previous specs.

Open this Link

Specs are:

CPU: I5 @ 2.66GHz
RAM: 4GB
OS: 7 Home Premium 64Bit
HDD: 500GB
1GB NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 420M Graphics Card

For £598.99

This Offer ends Wednesday I think, but check it out

Hope this helps,

Dok

The Game · 18 Apr 2011 at 15:13

I have 15.4 inch screen at the moment.

Would anyone recommend a Sandy Bridge laptop possibly an i7?

Had a look at this, slightly more than I would like to pay:

http://configure.euro.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?c=uk&cs=ukdhs1&l=en&kc=&oc=n00x7m05

Dokinator · 18 Apr 2011 at 15:18

Didn't like what I posted then?

M1k3H · 19 Apr 2011 at 12:59

Dokinator said:
Now this may be okay for you as an upgrade to your previous specs.

Open this Link

Specs are:

CPU: I5 @ 2.66GHz
RAM: 4GB
OS: 7 Home Premium 64Bit
HDD: 500GB
1GB NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 420M Graphics Card

For £598.99

This Offer ends Wednesday I think, but check it out

Hope this helps,

Dok

+1 on this, seems a very decent machine for the specs!

Ben Cole · 19 Apr 2011 at 13:22

I recently spruced up my 2.2GHz Core2Duo Dell Vostro with 4Gb Ram, OCZ Vertex2 and Windows 7.

For it's useage it's perfect and even the wife has noticed the inmprovement.

If you're worried about cost why not just buy a second hand HDD for pennies and use that whilst your deliberating?

olivier renault · 19 Apr 2011 at 13:51

SSDs are really good in laptops. HDs are a big bottleneck, laptops aren't very demanding on capacity (at least for what I use them for), silent, shock resistant, and energy efficient, and improve the startup times (I tend to stop and start my laptop a lot more often than the desktop). Plus the fact that you can now get a 120GB Vertex for £125, that's be ideal imo. Best thing I've done to my UL30A. It's only a CULV 1.2GHz, but feels as quick as my desktop for general use. Loads windows in seconds instead of minutes, and programs are very responsive.

A word of warning with Sony's though. Sony like to mess about with components making a straight swap sometimes difficult.

The Game · 19 Apr 2011 at 21:01

Dokinator, it does look a good machine but would prefer to go with the most up to date cpu if I was to get a new machine.

Are any of the sandy bridge laptops worth considering, or should I hold off for something better ‘bulldozer/Ivy Bridge?

Heard about all the SB motherboard problems, don’t know if laptops have suffered any similar problems.

Current laptop is slow on start up & loading programs; just not sure I should spend money on this machine.

arobase · 20 Apr 2011 at 04:46

The Game said:
I paid £500 for this machine in 2007, so possibly could stretch to £500/£6000 if the new machine was worth it.

Would ideally like as up to date a laptop for around this price as possible, I am finding my current machine struggles with lots of things & is quite slow spec’s below:

CPU: 1.86Ghz
Ram: 2GB
Vista 32-bit home premium
Hdd: 102GB

Have heard of a new Dell on other posts, but don’t know if that is worth it.

Was planning on building a desktop as a lot of forum members will probably know, but was put off with all the motherboard problems with Sandy Bridge.

Don’t know whether to get new laptop first, & do a desktop build when something else comes out at a later date.

Upgrading Vista to Windows 7 would already be a great improvement, whether you also change the HDD for a SSD or not.
Then You could also try to upgrade RAM to 4 GB if possible, even if officially it's supposed to work with 2 GB only.

My old Asus U1F was supposed to not handle more than 1 GB or 1.5 GB, but I got it work with 2 GB !!!

Same as for the Fujitsu P1610...

The Game · 21 Apr 2011 at 11:22

What ssd would anyone recommend for this laptop, as I might just do an upgrade.

120GB Vertex2 or is there something better.

arobase · 22 Apr 2011 at 18:26

The Game said:
What ssd would anyone recommend for this laptop, as I might just do an upgrade.

120GB Vertex2 or is there something better.

Just depend on what you mean as better ?

Vertex 2 is quite fine in term of performance, but I don't know much about this model in the long term...

I just have an 160 GB Kingston with Intel x25 chips, much slower than the Vertex 2, but I needed high capacity and realibility...

This was the cheapest I could find at the time I bought it and that big... ^^

Tweaker · 22 Apr 2011 at 19:12

I bought a new SSD for my laptop, best thing i ever did, lots of issues with my old HDD, but the SSD has made boot quick times quicker, programs load fast and generally is a better experience. I think the main thing is that the HDD i had ran at 5400 with a high seek time, a lot of performance from my laptop was held back by my HDD.

The Game · 24 Apr 2011 at 12:07

Have found: OCZ Vertex 2 120GB SATA II 2.5-inch SSD for £159.99

As mentioned laptop is a Vaio VGN-N38E, never had a ssd before so should I go for this or does anyone recommend anything else.

Thanks.

The Game · 24 Apr 2011 at 14:56

Would a OCZ Vertex 3 120GB work in my laptop.

I know my laptop does not have sata 3 ports, so won't be able to take full advantage of the vertex 3 read/write speed but what read/write would i be able to get from a vertex 3 with my laptop model.

Bane · 24 Apr 2011 at 15:14

I'd consider a new laptop, as the spec is pretty old. Especially if you look at Youtube other media rich content.

arobase · 25 Apr 2011 at 03:45

The Game said:
Would a OCZ Vertex 3 120GB work in my laptop.

I know my laptop does not have sata 3 ports, so won't be able to take full advantage of the vertex 3 read/write speed but what read/write would i be able to get from a vertex 3 with my laptop model.

Even if the laptop does not have sata 3, sata 3 SSD are backward compatible with sata 2 and there isn't much difference in the real world and you will really notice the difference with a hdd (even compared with 7200RPM hdd).

morfmedia · 25 Apr 2011 at 17:56

SSD = awesome upgrade for a laptop. I did it to my several year old Vostro and it rocked. a HUGE improvement. Buy one, you can always transfer it to a newer laptop. Yes Sandy bridge laptops are out, I'm waiting for Intel Thunderbolt ports to be fitted to non Mac laptops....