I didn't really want to be so hard on that poor little Asus machine, its pretty good for what it is, but they don't cost much more new. I also cannot personally recommend newer Lenovo machines as their quality is headed hard south over the last couple years.westypoo wrote:ok thats what i was wanting to hear. thank you piledriver for breaking (dumbing) it down for me.im thinking a ssd would be better then a hard drive right?
SSDs are nice, I have a couple, but there is no substitute for the storage size/density/cost of a hard drive, I have a 256GB ssd and a 500GB hdd in my X300, OS (Win8.1, couple Linux distros, and Android-x86) lives on the ssd, home dir (and backup for Windows which still tends to eat itself occasionally) on the HDD.
Windows still lacks a good solution to keeping the home dir/data off the system drive, but Win10 looks like it has much better support than the current hacks.
I strongly suggest trying the Win10 evals out on that old netbook if you have the time to play, my X300 came wth Vista preinstalled and it was an absolute slug... Win8/8.1 comparatively screams on it.
(although i usually run Linux of some form, which is even faster esp. on limited hardware)
Win10 will be a free upgrade for that Win7 machine once released.(at least if done during the first year after release)
My primary use for Windows seems to be only to run Windows update...
You can get a new "pull" fast ~zero hour 500 or 750GB 2.5" drive on Ebay cheap courtesy of folks who paid for an SSD upgrade on a new machine. By cheap I mean $10-30... You can also pick up a hdd tray that slides in place of the DVD for most machines.
I have also recently seen some articles that indicate SSDs lose data if not powered up regularly, have not seen that myself.
...but SSDs are considered comparatively disposable in comparison to HDDs, they are fast but not known to last forever.
I have personally bought drives from NYcomputek on ebay, but just find someone that moves a lot of merchandise.
You can also pick up a good used BD writer for cheap if so inclined, makes for a good/cheap blueray player and backup solution. (There are really only 2-3 laptop form factors for the optical drives, check with the seller, he knows what fits in what)
Another decent long term archival solution is DVD-RAM, which most DVD readers/writers can actually do.
The media is kinda pricey, but its ~endlessly rewritable and is rated to last for ~30 years.
Also doesn't need dvd "writer" software, you just use it like a HDD until full them store away safely.