HOW TO SPEED UP YOUR OLD LAPTOP ?

Come on we all have come to this problem once in our lifetime unless you are super rich to buy anything that comes on the latest market. Having a laptop that’s 5-6 years old which stuck frequently while doing any task is a headache all the time. And as I say again we all have faced this problem at least once. Why am I saying that ?  because we cannot always claim up-to-date tech in the market. Laptops and computers are expensive and claiming what’s on the latest market will always cost a lot of money. So once we decide to go with the device, we plan to stick with it for 4-5 years or even more until it wears out but the applications, software’s keeps on developing frequently which becomes much more hardware consuming that our old device cannot keep up to.

So buying a new device will cost you a lot of money which you have to plan but if you don’t have money to wholly replace the device then why not upgrade your device so that it can keep up to the latest software’s. So what can we do to make our old slugged device a faster and better up to date computer ? 

Here is what you can do to revamp your device:

ADD SSD

Adding an SSD in your device makes it a lot faster. Solid State Drive aka SSD is different from your traditional hard drives which have a rotating disk. Installing your OS and other applications in your SSD will enable the fast boot time of your laptop, opening of applications and shutting down time in a blink of an eye. You will feel much more improvement after installing an SSD in your device because the main reason for your laptop to be sluggish is it’s hard drive. HDDs are not meant to be faster. When you install all your OS and applications in HDD it will be even slower, taking a lot of time to start the windows or any other applications.

New laptops are coming with inbuilt SSD while old laptops may not come with SSD. So upgrading to SSD you will gain significant improvement in your old devices performance. New laptops come with dual storage systems where you can keep both SSD and HDD in the laptop. You can keep all your OS in SSD while you can store your other files like photos and videos in HDD. Your old Laptop may not have room for both of the storage so you have to take your HDD out in oeder to replace it with an SSD.

With time the price of SSD is getting cheaper in Nepal. Here you can find the price of an SSD with its variant and type. LINK

UPGRADE RAM

You should at least have 8GB of RAM in your device. With applications now consuming much more ram the perfect standard is 8GB. Leaving other editing apps Google Chrome alone will consume your much more ram which makes it difficult to use any other application. RAM is relatively cheaper than the SSD. So make sure your device has at least got 8GB of ram. New devices have got more slots for RAM which helps you add ram without replacing the old one but in old laptops it may not facilitate so replacing is only the solution. Not many people will need 16GB of RAM. For people who do internet surfing while performing office tasks, 8GB will be mere enough for them. 

CHECK YOUR STARTUP PROGRAMS

Any application running in the background can slow your laptop’s performance. You can speed up your device with just a simple check and turn off unwanted apps which start automatically during boot up time. 

Here is how you can turn it off 

 

In Windows 10, go to Task Manager > Startup to see the list of programs you have running when you turn on your computer.

On a MacBook, go to System Preferences > Users & Groups > Login Items to adjust which programs launch when you turn on the computer.

UNINSTALLING UNWANTED APPS

Unwanted apps consume your storage. When storage is overloaded your device will perform slower so it’s better to check the list of applications and uninstall the unwanted apps which you are never using again. Which will release more storage and make your drive perform better ultimately resulting in better performance. 

PERFORM MALWARE SCANS

It’s better to regularly run malware scans on your computer. Could be your laptop got malware installed unknowingly which may have created a pile of junk files that makes your laptop slower. So good to do a malware check which can be a solution to your sluggish computer performance. 

KEEP ON CLEANING YOUR LAPTOP

You must keep your laptops away from dust. Normally when the pile of dust gets gathered around the laptop fan and heat sinks, the graphics card and processor should perform harder because they are not getting proper air which makes them harder to perform remaining stable. This phenomenon can damage your processor and cards so maintaining your laptop clean is the uppermost priority. 

UPDATE DRIVERS 

Up to date drivers can perform better with its better optimized upgrades. So check the websites to ensure every driver is up to date.

Read more about SSD here

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