Laptop upgrade questions

[Dave7]

@Dave7 you haven't said what you use a PC/laptop so I'm going to take guess that your similar to me. My laptop is used for:

1. Email
2. Web surfing especially when it's something important to me
3. Shopping when it's something important or I need to research before buying
4. Ticket purchase for theatre, concerts, gigs etc.
5. "Work" - I'm treasurer to a local charity and need access to Excel and Word
6. Football - 3-4 times a season I might need it to watch the Rovers live
7. Films - from time to time to watch Netflix or similar

The above means I use it every day, perhaps just for a few minutes to update a finance spreadsheet or send an important email. All of this is very simple stuff and doesn't require a great deal of computing power. My machine, a Microsoft Surface Pro, is eight years old running Windows 10, handles all this very well. I use a laptop for these things because I want speed and accuracy which I can't achieve with a tablet or phone. As an example if I want to work on a spreadsheet, yes I can use my phone or tablet, but compared to using a laptop and key board these are slow and cumbersome.....for me. Important online shopping? If I'm researching cycle kit for example. Concert tickets? Well I'll be chasing Springsteen tickets on Thursday and Friday - there's no way I'd risk doing this on the small screen of my phone.

Plenty will disagree with me and offer reasons why a tablet or phone can do these things. I think it all boils down to ease of use, confidence in the outcome and what suits the individual.

I have a tablet, rarely used, and a Samsung phone which I use a great deal for messaging, browsing and reading etc. Stuff I want to do quickly and easily, in a comfy chair without firing up a laptop.

In your shoes, presuming my guess above is accurate, I would buy a good value laptop from Currys or similar. They will be able to offer you a data transfer service to move everything on your existing machine to the new one. You will then be "up and running" for everything you currently do and may need to in the future.

I knew this would be a longish post, my one fingered typing on the phone would have taken ages.........so I fired up the laptop........

Pretty much the same apart from.....
Work/spreadsheets. Not since retired.
Films/sport. Only on TV.

 

[bonzobanana]

I use a HP stream 11 inch laptop. It's about 1kg in weight, easily hides away in my backpack and battery life is up to 16 hours but I have the laptop setup for maximum speed and full brightness screen which knocks it down to 8 hours. That's a full day of use and I can access any free wifi points ee/bt etc as have bt broadband which are surprisingly common. Even when I was out on a walk with no houses to be seen except a small farm some distance away I could pick up bt wifi at a reasonable speed. The laptop was £50 from cashconverters and I picked up a 512GB micro sd card from amazon warehouse for 13 pounds. Not the fastest micro sd card but supplements the 64GB of eMMC storage the laptop has. The laptop boots in about 8 seconds from the bios screen. I have debloated the operating system quite a lot and optimised it for speed. I use adblockers etc and I have a local account only on windows to prevent a lot of un-necessary background tasks etc.

 

[DCBassman]

@Dave7 can you post the model number of your laptop? I suspect it can be upgraded in terms of RAM and even more so, to Windows 11.
If this is so, post it to me and I'll do the upgrade work for nowt. But do need details of spec first.

 

[DCBassman]

Oh, and anything that runs Win 8 will run Win 10 with no issue, no extra hardware requirements at all.

 

[Dave7]

@Dave7 can you post the model number of your laptop? I suspect it can be upgraded in terms of RAM and even more so, to Windows 11.
If this is so, post it to me and I'll do the upgrade work for nowt. But do need details of spec first.

No idea how to find that.
I will ask my SiL to find it for me.
Thank you

 

[DCBassman]

No idea how to find that.
I will ask my SiL to find it for me.
Thank you

Should be a label on the bottom somewhere

 

[vickster]

No idea how to find that.
I will ask my SiL to find it for me.
Thank you

Usually under settings/system (or properties) if not a sticker as above!

 

[ebikeerwidnes]

Sorry - only just seen this thread

I have been advising the local Food Bank about exactly this with their machines
well - almost exactly - their machines are probably very slightly younger but were upgraded to WIndows 10 a while ago


Anyway - as people have said - WIndows 10 is end-of-life so I wouldn;t do anything with that
You might be able to fiddle around (or get someone to do it for you!) and get Windows 11 to work but it is one of those things that might work now but then an update might come along in a while which screws it all up


So I would consider the laptop to be too old to be useful really

As far as how to replace it - I would consider a cheap WIndows 11 machine - possibly refurbished from a reputable company and with a guarantee

or a Chromebook

depends on whether or not you will ever need/want things like spreadsheets (no I think??) and Word Processors

personally I hate trying to type anything on a phone of tablet - I mean my typing is bad enough on a decent keyboard (as you may have noticed!!!)

so I actually do very little on my phone other than phone stuff and messages
plus a few apps like weather and news - but even then only when I am out of the house
so my view is different

but I would certainly consider the laptop as needing replacing