Laptop Upgrades

gaza4

hey guys, have an old Acer laptop that i wanna put back into service for a bit of on the go/out of home video editing. i know that its not stricktly up to the task but if i could at the very least run Premiere Pro on it to show people rough edits, make changes etc it would be handy.

laptop is an acer aspire 5735
windows vista
intel core 2 duo 2.0ghz
160gb hdd
3gb ram

was thinking about picking up a 60gb ssd coz as it is its dog slow, a usb3.0 express card for my 3.0 external drive and installing windows 7. my main goal is to have a laptop that will boot up in a few mins (currently it takes about 10 mins to be able to actually do anything, not good if with a client for example) and i can transfer large video files quick enough if i need to.

what would peoples thoughts on these upgrades be???

Torqay

gaza4 wrote: »

was thinking about picking up a 60gb ssd coz as it is its dog slow, a usb3.0 express card for my 3.0 external drive and installing windows 7.

A 64 GB SSD doesn't set you back much and definitely worth it. Buying Windows 7 is a different matter and economically not really viable given the age of the laptop. A fresh installation of Vista and some good tweaking should do the trick (you don't want to clone your rotten installation anyway).

Unlike Windows 7, Vista does not support the TRIM command, but this is not the end of the world and usually remedied with the SSD toolkit supplied by the manufacturer.

gaza4 wrote: »

my main goal is to have a laptop that will boot up in a few mins (currently it takes about 10 mins to be able to actually do anything, not good if with a client for example)

With a solid state disk, you better get used to seconds rather than minutes, whether it's Vista or Windows 7 it shouldn't take much longer than 20 seconds to boot.

gaza4

Torqay wrote: »

A 64 GB SSD doesn't set you back much and definitely worth it. Buying Windows 7 is a different matter and economically not really viable given the age of the laptop. A fresh installation of Vista and some good tweaking should do the trick (you don't want to clone your rotten installation anyway).

well already have a copy of windows 7 i can use and my vista isnt 64bit which i need fro premiere pro...my plan is to simply remove the old hdd, pop the ssd in and install the new OS.

Unlike Windows 7 does not support trim, but this is not the end of the world and usually remedied with the SSD toolkit supplied by the manufacturer.

can you tell me more about this??? i dont know anything about it...i thought the toolkits were just for upgrading an HDD to SSD, transfering your OS and files etc

With a solid state disk, you better get used to seconds rather than minutes, whether it's Vista or Windows 7 it should take much longer than 20 seconds to boot.

oh i know, my ssd desktop is so fast i find it difficult to use other "standard" machines let alone my crappy slow laptop!!! haha

Torqay

gaza4 wrote: »

well already have a copy of windows 7 i can use and my vista isnt 64bit which i need fro premiere pro...my plan is to simply remove the old hdd, pop the ssd in and install the new OS.

If you already have Windows 7 x64, why not. Maybe you should upgrade to 4 GB RAM then. A 2 GB module costs ~€25, the laptop can take both, DDR2 PC2-6400 or DDR2 PC2-5300, check what's in the laptop at the moment and replace the current 1 GB module with a corresponding 2 GB module.

gaza4 wrote: »

i thought the toolkits were just for upgrading an HDD to SSD, transfering your OS and files etc

They also come with a variety of maintenance and tweaking utilities.

RodgersLFC

The first thing I would do is get rid of Windows vista and upgrade to Win7. You wont believe the difference it will make - Vista is the worst OS that Microsoft have ever produced.

HelpWithIT

If your Vista is taking 10 minutes to load, then 10 GB extra RAM or SSD isn't going to make a difference, you gotta sort out your boot time first....either it's down to disk errors, viruses/spyware or just need a spring clean...you only gain about 50% boot up time with SSD, file transfer times are much faster...your video editing needs will slightly improve with extra ram but it's dependent on your processor speed ...see here for a benchmark on SSD

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/features/storage/3426605/what-difference-will-ssd-make-my-laptop/

gaza4

RodgersLFC wrote: »

The first thing I would do is get rid of Windows vista and upgrade to Win7. You wont believe the difference it will make - Vista is the worst OS that Microsoft have ever produced.

upgrading to windows 7 is my primary plan anyway

HelpWithIT wrote: »

If your Vista is taking 10 minutes to load, then 10 GB extra RAM or SSD isn't going to make a difference, you gotta sort out your boot time first....either it's down to disk errors, viruses/spyware or just need a spring clean...you only gain about 50% boot up time with SSD, file transfer times are much faster...your video editing needs will slightly improve with extra ram but it's dependent on your processor speed ...see here for a benchmark on SSD

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/features/storage/3426605/what-difference-will-ssd-make-my-laptop/

surely if i'm replacing the hard drive and doing a clean install of windows 7 i wont have any problems...

HelpWithIT

gaza4 wrote: »

upgrading to windows 7 is my primary plan anyway



surely if i'm replacing the hard drive and doing a clean install of windows 7 i wont have any problems...

Clean install would be better, I thought you were going to clone the drive (-;

gaza4

HelpWithIT wrote: »

Clean install would be better, I thought you were going to clone the drive (-;

nope, new drive, new os, fresh start...

so would i be right in saying i can just removed the old drive, put the new one in and install my OS hassle free???

whizbang

yes, just do fresh install.
First turn off all unneeded hardware, then after, kill all unnecessary processes that are run in Win7 by default.

You may be able to go to 8G ram in that machine, may be a better investment than SSD: video needs lots ram.

gaza4

whizbang wrote: »

yes, just do fresh install.
First turn off all unneeded hardware, then after, kill all unnecessary processes that are run in Win7 by default.

You may be able to go to 8G ram in that machine, may be a better investment than SSD: video needs lots ram.

i dont intend on doing any heavy intensive editing or any exporting, have my pc for that. this is just so i can go and show people rough cuts and make small changes on the fly as opposed to exporting something out, showing them, taking notes and do the changes at home and then export it out again hoping that is what they were looking for...

Torqay

whizbang wrote: »

You may be able to go to 8G ram in that machine

That I doubt very much...

whizbang

My Apologies.

1.4 Intel® GL40 Express Chipset Feature Support

1.4.1 Processor
• Intel® Pentium® Dual Core and Intel® Celeron® mobile processors based on the
45-nm process
• Intel® Celeron® Processors T1700, T1600, 585 and 575
• 667 MHz and 800 MHz1 FSB support
1.4.2 System Memory
• Support for DDR2 at 667 MHz and 800 MHz
• Support for DDR3 at 667 MHz when FSB at 667 MHz only
• Support for DDR3 at 800 MHz
• Maximum memory supported: 4 GB