New laptop or not.

[castlerock]

Hi, my current laptop that I bought in 2015 is running very slow now. I'm not sure whether its because its old or whether or not it needs cleaning up somehow. :-/

The one I bought was only £300 and its an -
Asus X555LA Core i3-4030U 4GB 1TB DVDSM 15.6 inch Windows 8.1 Laptop

I don't need a massively high tech one, just something that does the basics. The one below seems to have decent reviews for a budget laptop but I'm not sure it's even any better?!

ASUS VivoBook with Microsoft Office 365 E410MA 14 Inch Full HD Laptop (Intel Celeron N4020, 4 GB RAM, 64 GB eMMC, Windows 10 S)

Any help would be appreciated. Tha ks fpr reading.

 

[next010]

The old Asus could just need some maintenance work to get it back running okay. Clear out unused applications, if you've updated to windows 10 there is a reset PC function that will do this.

You could just clean install windows on the laptop or go with something linux based like ZorinOS Core that uses a lot less resources and works well on older computers.

Make a backup of anything important on the laptop download balena etcher, use it to write the Zorin ISO to a USB drive, then boot from USB drive and set up dual boot or erase windows, its worth a try at least to see if it meets your needs and costs nothing.

The new Asus you list might run faster than your old one but its CPU isn't quite as good but should be okay for the basics.

 

[rccarguy2]

Both are pretty much the same with 4GB. I'd say upgrade your RAM fit a SSD and do fresh windows install.

If you're just web browsing etc it'll be fine

 

[Kapkirk]

Why would you want to "downgrade" the one you have to one with a Celeron CPU, which is inferior to an i3. Just get another 4Gb ram, upgrade Hard disk to an SSD.

 

[EndlessWaves]

Why would you want to "downgrade" the one you have to one with a Celeron CPU, which is inferior to an i3. Just get another 4Gb ram, upgrade Hard disk to an SSD.

While the Celeron brand is lower in Intel's range than the i3 brand, it's not necessarily inferior when comparing two different ages of processors. A brand new Celeron 7305 would smash the old i3-4105U.

Having said that, the N4020 isn't the best of CPUs and is over four years old, having originally been released at the end of 2017.

I wouldn't be in any hurry to replace your current laptop with that, it's definitely worth doing a bit of troubleshooting as I wouldn't have expected it to be hopelessly slow.

 

[Jamie]

If it's currently running a mechanical hard drive then upgrading to an SSD will make it feel like a new machine in my experience.

Looks quite a straightforward job, all you need is a bit of patience, the correct screwdriver and a plastic pry tool.