What to do with laptop?

MouthBoy · 11 Nov 2013 at 23:43

Howdy all,

I have just been given an old laptop from my dad who no longer has need of it. Its an HP Compaq 8510p. Not exactly a beast but I only really wanted it to do some web coding on and browsing the net when I am not upstairs on my PC. I am installing XP right now as it is the only OS I had lying about.

What I am looking to do is grab another copy of Windows 7 and replace the HDD with a 60gb SSD. In your honest opinion would you do this? I know the laptop is never going to be fast but after using an SSD for a long time now in my PC, I just hate waiting! Would this genuinely make a speed difference or would I be wasting my money?

Thanks

Sjdeany · 12 Nov 2013 at 04:00

Do it, You can always re-use the SSD in another system.

CEUOTC · 12 Nov 2013 at 17:24

If you feel adventurous, throw in the SSD and try a few linux distros:

Linux Lite 1.0.6.
Ubuntu.
Linux Mint.

These will be pretty quick and offer good support for most laptops.

And you should be able to do web coding just fine.

MouthBoy · 12 Nov 2013 at 18:36

I actually tried to install Ubuntu 3-4 times but each time the install threw up a different problem. Sometimes it wouldn't read the DVD that it was on, then it wouldn't read for USB, then I finally got it installed (or so I thought) and it just didn't boot after. So I gave up lol!

I have a WD Blue 500Gb drive sitting on my desk that would go into the laptop fine...but I don't know if I should take my 60gb SSD from my main rig (leaving my 512GB SSD for games and windows) and place that in there, or just use this 500gb drive.

Also, I found someone selling Win7 Pro keys on that rainforest place for £30, so I may pick up one of them tonight.