Starting a Business and Need a Faster Computer?
How to Revive an Older Laptop With This Simple Upgrade
If you have been wanting to buy the latest Macbook but can’t justify the expense - instead look for a lower price laptop and do this simple upgrade! Read on and learn how you can transform a budget laptop into a speedy and responsive machine - (Or...buy a Macbook Pro from 2012 for less than $400 and upgrade it to use for all of your multimedia projects!)
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I’m almost embarrassed to write this…
My first ‘real’ job was in Technical Support. I spent almost 8 years in IT doing everything tech related (desktops, laptops, servers, networking, backup systems…).
You would think that making a decision on what type of computer should be fairly easy for me, right? Wrong!
Months ago I bought a new laptop. It wasn’t the top of the line - but it certainly was good enough.
Then after just a few months… My brand new laptop started to slow down.
When I say slow down - I mean - it was almost unusable. It took minutes to boot up, it took over 30 seconds to open up a Word document. Every project took 2x-3x as long as it should have!!!
I was getting so frustrated! I could never get anything done… I was always waiting.
My computer was ‘new’ only 6 months ago, but it suddenly felt very, very old. Can anyone else relate to this problem?
So back to why I’m almost embarrassed to write this. I should have been able to fix it. Right? (Did I not spend 8 years in tech for nothing???)
But instead of solving it - I started to look for the ‘easy’ fix: My solution was to buy a newer, better computer! I started looking for high-end laptops, Macbook Pro, etc… There are always good deals for new computers!
But… finally, I stopped to think for a minute. I managed to quiet down the impulsive side of me that wanted an ‘easy’ solution and took some time to think it through.
I had not realized that the price of Solid State Drives (commonly known as SSD) have dramatically reduced in the last few years!
If you are wondering what an SSD is - it is the hard drive that is inside every smartphone, tablet and high-end laptops. This is how your iPhone or iPad turns on instantly - because they all use SSD drives.
SSD = Big Improved Performance!
SSD drives are massively faster than the spinning hard drives the most low-end or mid-tier laptops have. The drawbacks are that they have always been expensive with smaller storage compared to spinning drives.
However, It is now possible to upgrade your laptop from a spinning hard drive to a SSD drive for less than $100!
Fast forward to two days later with new SSD via Amazon Prime. I cloned my spinning drive and replaced it with an SSD drive.
The actual work involved to upgrade is easy - for anyone. You don’t need to be a tech person to do it.
Here is the difference:
Old: Boot time with spinning hard drive: 3-4 minutes, plus extra time for loading applications
New: Boot time with SSD: Less than 30 seconds to login screen on Windows 10, and instant loading for applications.
Now my 6 month old laptop feels like a top of the line computer! It opens up everything instantly and I never have to wait.
I go through similar challenges with my business. Every time I get frustrated I start to look at ways to take short cuts.
I get distracted by ‘shiny objects’ - new tools, services, or courses that I could buy and my problems would be solved.
But - the real answer is to just slow down a little bit and focus on solving one problem. Most of the time you can break larger problems into small challenges.
When you start solving smaller challenges one at a time, it builds momentum. Before you know it, you’ve accomplished something really big!
Let me know if you think this is helpful - I spend my time helping businesses improve their marketing and attracting new customers.
Most of the work involves technology - and just like the hard drive example above, the technology is becoming faster and easier to use!
PS - This upgrade project was so successful that I did the same thing with our 2012 Macbook Pro. We had written it off for dead because it was so slow. Can you guess what happened there?