We have recently seen a trend at the shop of older laptops being brought in, with customers not being happy with the speed they are now running. The question is always "do I need to go buy a new laptop now?" So far, in all of the cases we have had here, the answer was no.
If your laptop (or desktop computer) is 3 years old, chances are that the Hard Drive that came with the machine is a physical hard disc drive (HDD). Simply upgrading that drive to a solid state drive (SSD) can improve the performance of any computer drastically.
Solid State Drives (SSDs) are better than Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) because they are faster, more reliable, lighter, and use less power. SSDs have no moving parts, which makes them less prone to breakage, vibration, and thermal issues. They can load data faster and have higher read and write speeds than HDDs. SSDs also consume less energy and allow computers to run cooler.
Recently the cost of these kinds of drives has been declining steadily and choices of reputably branded drives can often be had for under $50.00.
Another way to improve performance is to add some Random Access Memory (RAM) to your machine, especially if it has less than 8 Gigabytes of memory (and with the current price of memory, upgrading to 16 Gigabytes is also very affordable).
Note: Some models of "budget" laptops do not have the capability to have the RAM upgraded. But virtually all desktop computers do.
Along with the new hard drive, we install a fresh copy of Windows 10 or 11 (customer's choice) and move data from the old hard drive to the new solid state drive. This can all be done for under $150.00 total (including the new parts).
Village Tech can do these services for you and have your computer downtime be as short as only a couple of days. You'll be amazed at the difference.