How to "Make an Old Laptop Great Again!" :-)

[Cowboy T]

Got an old Dell Latitude D830 lying around, wondering what to do with it. No, using it as a boat anchor or fishing weight or Frisbee wasn't an option. So, I thought, OK, what can I do to make this old dual-core warrior useable?

The solution was two things.

First, I upgraded the DRAM from 2GB to 8GB, its apparent max. Is that a lot? Nope. But it's way better than it was before.

Second, I put in one of those SSD hard disk drives. WHAT. A. DIFFERENCE. I mean, just...wow. Applications load quickly. Filling up the DRAM to test swapping to disk even made even swapping go from absolute torture to almost...tolerable...almost.

The operating system is Debian GNU/Linux, version 10.6 (the current release version).

It's amazing what these modern SSD's and adding some DRAM can do for a box. The performance improvement is really stark. This thing now feels pretty doggone fast! Boot time is radically improved. Same for updating the OS; now the "bottleneck" is the Internet connection instead of the hard disk drive. Loading applications, like I mentioned earlier, is quick.

My laptop needs are not "31337 g$m3rz" style needs. This laptop will be used for general office suite, email, Web browsing, and continuing my PERL and Python lessons on the train to and from work.

Cost to do this: $60 for the laptop (including AC adaptor), $30 for the SSD, and $25 for the DRAM upgrade. That's $115. Not too bad.

[dcmartin]

Nice Job! I have a mid 2009 Macbook Pro 13" It started showing it's age around 2 yrs ago. I also replaced the HD with solid state unit (about $100 for a 500GB) eventually I wound up replacing the fan ($9) the speakers ($28) maxed the ram ($30) and a new battery ($45) Works really well, super fast but..... because of it's age, I can't upgrade the Operating System. Eventually (in a few years) It'll be obsolete, but in the meantime I can delay spending another 2K.

[Rivers]

I have a early 2009 Mac Pro tower that now has 48GB RAM, 2x3.46GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon processor, an NVIDIA GeForce GTX980 grahpics card and five internal hard drives. Right now running 10.13.6, can go to 10.14 when the graphics drivers are finally posted (that's the only downside for this setup). All things considered, the upgrades have given at least two or three more years of workhorse life to this computer.

[Bastard]

I am using a roughly 12 year old HP laptop as a media player on my reloading bench - current version on Linux Mint and am updated wireless card, alright I couldn't get past the bios whitelist on the wireless card... so updated wireless dongle is all it too to breath new life into this paperweight.

[therealnickb]

I did the same to an older dell. Runs like a champ now. (Once I got all the drivers updated. Before I did that wonkiness was regular)

[The War Wagon]

Got an old Dell Latitude D830 lying around, wondering what to do with it. No, using it as a boat anchor or fishing weight or Frisbee wasn't an option. So, I thought, OK, what can I do to make this old dual-core warrior useable?

The solution was two things.

First, I upgraded the DRAM from 2GB to 8GB, its apparent max. Is that a lot? Nope. But it's way better than it was before.

Second, I put in one of those SSD hard disk drives. WHAT. A. DIFFERENCE. I mean, just...wow. Applications load quickly. Filling up the DRAM to test swapping to disk even made even swapping go from absolute torture to almost...tolerable...almost.

Welcome to my world, 2017!

[MrFancyPants]

Old PCs always have a place among collectors who build and run period specific systems.

Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk

[sonofeugene]

I have a early 2009 Mac Pro tower that now has 48GB RAM, 2x3.46GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon processor, an NVIDIA GeForce GTX980 grahpics card and five internal hard drives. Right now running 10.13.6, can go to 10.14 when the graphics drivers are finally posted (that's the only downside for this setup). All things considered, the upgrades have given at least two or three more years of workhorse life to this computer.

I did something similar. I had an old 2008 Mac Pro tower that I could no longer upgrade the software on and while it was good, eventually I'd need to get a new computer for nothing else than my Sonos once they leave the old OS behind.

So, I found a used Mac Pro, mid 2012 which is the last year for that tower, and put the drives from my old tower into the new tower. That was basically it, though the new computer has their top of the line 2 x 3.06 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon processors, 128 GB of RAM, and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 680 video card driving a 30" monitor. And that card is actually certified by Mac to run 10.14. I'm currently still running on 10.11.6.

[C.G.]

With the price of SSDs nowadays, anyone with an HDD should upgrade to an SSD for a major improvement.

[stevebla]

Linux. SSD.

[Cowboy T]

Indeed, I'm now building a couple of PC's with that new SSD form factor, M.2. This new M.2 storage is said to be *really* fast. One will get Slackware, and the other will get Debian. Perhaps I'll do a FreeBSD box again one of these days; it's been a while.

With the price of SSD nowadays, anyone with an HDD should upgrade to a SSD for a major improvement.

And with UNIX-style operating systems, cloning your hard disk drive is actually pretty easy to do. All you need is either the standard "cat" or "dd" commands, and you're done, no special software needed to do this.

For the Mac folks: it's unfortunate that the Apple folks are force-feeding new hardware on people who want to run the newer OS. There's no technical requirement to do so, given that Free/Net/OpenBSD and GNU/Linux platforms impose no such restriction. Would you consider running GNU/Linux on your Mac hardware?

[the86d]

Yuuuup, I moved to an SSD on my Phoenom x4 a few years ago(, before I got this i7 8-core), upgraded to an x6, and it ran like a champ, like 10-12 years with stability. It finally died...

10-12 years says something about MSI motherboards, I assume... NEVER going into power save mode, running about 24/7 the WHOLE TIME.

[lordmorgul]

[Cowboy T]

Just talked with a buddy who also has a Latitude D830. His machine, like mine used to have, has the original HDD in it. It's been his main machine for the last 10 years, running CentOS 6. He's installed 8GB of DRAM in it, and I told him how the SSD sped up my box. He's now going to pick up a 1TB SSD based on my results. Good times.

Also says something for the longevity of these Latitudes.

@the86d, yeah, that's pretty good, 10-12 years. Still have a Phenom-based box with 16GB DRAM, from about 8 years ago to act as my main server. Like yours, it was on 24/7/365. Still runs, and uses an MSI motherboard. I'm building a new box as a replacement due only to new server DRAM requirements (new box will have 64GB), but I might stick an SSD in it; should continue to make a very good desktop machine.

[Dragunov]

I've got several older ThinkPads, including my first one..... an 11 yr old T400.

P8800 (2.66ghz) C2D, 8gb/RAM, 256gb SSD (Drive C), and a 256gb SSD (Drive D) in Optical Drive Bay.

It runs Office 2013 just as fast as any new computer, plays older games, and fortunately, Lenovo put some really decent Ethernet in that model, and it's plenty fast enough.

I run Macrium Reflect for imaging duties, and Win7HP.

I no longer use HDD's in any computer I own, or I rebuild, and sell.

I have several T420's W/nVidia, for retro-gaming. Most have mSATA on the MB. I also had quite a few T430s ThinkPads, with mSATA, and T440p ThinkPads, with M.2 NGFF drives on the MB. I LOVE the older ThinkPads!

Those old Latitudes, old HP's are also really decent little tanks (I have several), but only the ones with Radeon graphics, and nVidia graphics. Most of those, I turn in to retro-gamers. Believe it or not, I sell a lot of them.