Question Is a 12year old laptop worth restoring?

[Drew2345]

Hi, I need a laptop for University work(small load tasks such as browsing, visual studio code, codeblocks, mathlab). I dont want to invest in a new expensive laptop because i would rather keep investing in my home PC but i still need something portable for Uni. My brother gave me his really old Asus X550V laptop. It boots but its insanely slow most likely due to the extremly old HDD(its also making noise). Also if you unplug it in instantly shuts down so the battery is dead.
Specs:
i5-6300HQ 2.3GHz
GTX 950M 2GB
8GB RAM

My question is: Is it worth investing the time and money to restore this laptop? Would it be suitable for 2024 OS such as windows 11? I could easily buy a SSD to swap out the HDD. Buy a new battery(I already found the exact one i need online) and take the laptop apart to apply new thermal compounds and check the cooler. The laptop is in great shape no display cracks or anything I just dont know if the age affects components performance and such.

 

[bill001g]

This is where you need to compare the cost of the battery and drive to the cost of a new machine or maybe a newer used machine.
Only you can decide on if its worth it.

It is highly unlikely you are going to get window 11 to run on it. It likely does not have the security chips microsoft wants. Not that it matters a lot windows 11 will likely run slower because of all the massive bloat that microsoft constantly adds. Even when microsoft drops support it doesn't mean much. That is mostly a scare tactic, I actually think it will be good to not have forced updates that seem to cause more problems than the hacks.

If it is a concern most application will run under linux and linux has much less overhead than windows with all its garbage features that you likely are not using anyway.

 

[zinkles]

Adding to the above, Visual Studio Code experience in that system isn't going to be that great, specially if you're using other applications like Browsers and etc alongside it on Windows 11.

 

[CountMike]

Hi, I need a laptop for University work(small load tasks such as browsing, visual studio code, codeblocks, mathlab). I dont want to invest in a new expensive laptop because i would rather keep investing in my home PC but i still need something portable for Uni. My brother gave me his really old Asus X550V laptop. It boots but its insanely slow most likely due to the extremly old HDD(its also making noise). Also if you unplug it in instantly shuts down so the battery is dead.
Specs:
i5-6300HQ 2.3GHz
GTX 950M 2GB
8GB RAM

My question is: Is it worth investing the time and money to restore this laptop? Would it be suitable for 2024 OS such as windows 11? I could easily buy a SSD to swap out the HDD. Buy a new battery(I already found the exact one i need online) and take the laptop apart to apply new thermal compounds and check the cooler. The laptop is in great shape no display cracks or anything I just dont know if the age affects components performance and such.

Yes I think so as long as it doesn't cost much. Windows 10 would be fine for another couple of years even security wise. It would even run W11 just as well but that would take some cheating. W11 is no "heavier " than W10, if you get rid of "bloat" which is advisable on either/all windows but most of it just disk space. W11 has less running services than W10 if you disable background running applications. It's totally false that W11 is any "heavier" than W10.
As for Linux, it's difficult or impossible to find programs or decent substitutes to Windows programs and you would probably need to cooperate with other windows users

 

[Drew2345]

This is where you need to compare the cost of the battery and drive to the cost of a new machine or maybe a newer used machine.
Only you can decide on if its worth it.

It is highly unlikely you are going to get window 11 to run on it. It likely does not have the security chips microsoft wants. Not that it matters a lot windows 11 will likely run slower because of all the massive bloat that microsoft constantly adds. Even when microsoft drops support it doesn't mean much. That is mostly a scare tactic, I actually think it will be good to not have forced updates that seem to cause more problems than the hacks.

If it is a concern most application will run under linux and linux has much less overhead than windows with all its garbage features that you likely are not using anyway.

SSDs are cheap these days i can get a 500gb one for 20$. New battery also 20$. A decent new laptop would be about 700$ because if im buying a laptop it makes sense id buy a decent gaming one so it lasts long term at least cheapest one i could find 700$ with a i5-12500H and rtx 4060.

 

[Drew2345]

Adding to the above, Visual Studio Code experience in that system isn't going to be that great, specially if you're using other applications like Browsers and etc alongside it on Windows 11.

Maybe on windows 10 then?

 

[punkncat]

It would be a good idea to check on the price of a quality replacement battery. Open the case up and see if the RAM is upgradable and also to get at that HDD to be replaced with an SSD.

I have purchased some pretty decent 8th gen and up laptops for barely over $100. Most of the time they need a battery or will be soon as well, so something to consider.

 

[kira-faye]

No. It's a 12 year old laptop.

 

[COLGeek]

No. It's a 12 year old laptop.

Agreed. Money would be better spent saving up for a much newer and capable system.

 

[helper800]

No. It's a 12 year old laptop.

Agreed. Money would be better spent saving up for a much newer and capable system.

I completely disagree. For 40 dollar he basically gets a brand new laptop with a battery/SSD. Reuse before recycle if it is performant enough, and for basic coding in visual studio its plenty fast enough. I would put a debloated Win10 install on it with the upgrades and it will do fine. As another has said, check if its got an open RAM slot. another 20-30 dollars to double the RAM would be another huge improvement.

 

[COLGeek]

I completely disagree. For 40 dollar he basically gets a brand new laptop with a battery/SSD. Reuse before recycle if it is performant enough, and for basic coding in visual studio its plenty fast enough. I would put a debloated Win10 install on it with the upgrades and it will do fine. As another has said, check if its got an open RAM slot. another 20-30 dollars to double the RAM would be another huge improvement.

I hear you, but everything connected to the new battery and SSD is twelve years old.

It will be okay until it isn't. Then a new system will be required anyway.

 

[helper800]

I hear you, but everything connected to the new battery and SSD is twelve years old.

It will be okay until it isn't. Then a new system will be required anyway.

For what he described needing to do for school it should be plenty. besides like I said 40 dollars to find out is not exactly rolling the dice... Besides its a 9 year old laptop at most if we get pedantic.

 

[Grobe]

Also have in mind that an old laptop - even if you upgrade with battery+ssd - will cease to work sooner or later. What goes first seems quite random (in my experience).

Being "that data dude" within the family group - I tend to get thrown old laptops at me because none other than me and my brother are capable to even install an OS. With a limited experience, I've seen the following failures (those that isn't being damaged by obvious mishandling):

• Acer aspire bought in 2019 (very cheap model in 300$ ballpark) - Held about 3.5 years before touch pad start to not work any more. Same computer also had a slow growing power supply fault that grew from 2 years and forward - the chance that it didn't turn completely off when poweroff went up over time - independent of os).
• Dell Lattitude D610 (anchient) : Works, but stereo jack busted, battery dead (not preventing from run on ac power only), and it doesn't tolerate high cpu usage for very long time before it cut power.

However I still have a Acer Travelmate (don't remember excact model name now) originally having a 30GB ide hdd and windows XP, bought in 2004. This still run strong, actually so much that I decided to buy a new battery - because this was a pretty expensive model at the time of phurcase, and the keyboard is really nice compared to cheap laptops of today.

 

[Drew2345]

For what he described needing to do for school it should be plenty. besides like I said 40 dollars to find out is not exactly rolling the dice... Besides its a 9 year old laptop at most if we get pedantic.

I finally got the small screwdriver needed to open up the laptop. After opening it up and cleaning out all the gunk, i saw as expected an empty ram slot. Laptop Ram is also cheap these days. 32GB goes for around 40$. 16GB goes for 25$. I also found a laptop shop near me that sells parts for these old laptops such as a new keyboard(this one is faded) and palmrest/keyboard coverand cooler if necessary. I can restore this pretty easily with a total cost of like 100$. Maybe im wrong but i dont see why a gtx 950m and i5 6300 couldnt run basic tasks such as visual studio code and browsing i remember my brother used to play apex legends on this like 4-5years ago.(it was his uni laptop as well)

 

[Drew2345]

I finally got the small screwdriver needed to open up the laptop. After opening it up and cleaning out all the gunk, i saw as expected an empty ram slot. Laptop Ram is also cheap these days. 32GB goes for around 40$. 16GB goes for 25$. I also found a laptop shop near me that sells parts for these old laptops such as a new keyboard(this one is faded) and palmrest/keyboard coverand cooler if necessary. I can restore this pretty easily with a total cost of like 100$. Maybe im wrong but i dont see why a gtx 950m and i5 6300 couldnt run basic tasks such as visual studio code and browsing i remember my brother used to play apex legends on this like 4-5years ago.(it was his uni laptop as well)

My brother never did any maintenance on it so if the gpu and cpu aren't fried from running too hot over a long period of time i think i should be alright after i clean everything and get good temps on a fresh OS on SSD no?Or maybe my hopes are too high

 

[helper800]

I finally got the small screwdriver needed to open up the laptop. After opening it up and cleaning out all the gunk, i saw as expected an empty ram slot. Laptop Ram is also cheap these days. 32GB goes for around 40$. 16GB goes for 25$. I also found a laptop shop near me that sells parts for these old laptops such as a new keyboard(this one is faded) and palmrest/keyboard coverand cooler if necessary. I can restore this pretty easily with a total cost of like 100$. Maybe im wrong but i dont see why a gtx 950m and i5 6300 couldnt run basic tasks such as visual studio code and browsing i remember my brother used to play apex legends on this like 4-5years ago.(it was his uni laptop as well)

Personally, I would only start with the battery, SSD, and RAM. See how it runs the tasks you want and then consider the keyboard, et cetera. Worst case is you make these changes and kill it, or it dies quickly thereafter. I suspect this laptop will be fine though.

 

[Grobe]

Also - whenever you're considering take a computer in use as a daily driver, I highly recommend testing it using Memtest86+ (normal to be included in boot menu in most modern Linux distros) and let it stay overnight. This often results in the following outcomes:

• Passes without errors. This computer probably wouldn't fail (test doesn't exclude possibility for failure on other parts ).
• Ram failure, repported on screen - Don't use the computer. If possible replace with a known good RAM sticks and test again.
• Turns off by itself. You may want to several tests to see for yourself if the computer cut power hard or tries to power off in a controlled way. If it is a hard power cut-off, it's probably an electrical fault in power supply, either external or internal on motherboard. If you cannot observe any visual damage on motherboard this may be extremely difficult to pinpoint the faulty part. Because the faulty part is unknown you may risk to replace many parts, without a conclusion regarding the fault. I had one laptop (bought stupidly cheap) and when this happens, I scavenged it for ram and hdd and tossed the rest as it was worthless.