I have a workhorse laptop that was top of the line -- in 2009. It is a Lenovo X301 with:
Windows 10 (64 bit) Intel Core 2 Duo U9600 @1.60GHz 4GB of Ram 125 GB SSD (only 29 GB used, I am not a space hog)
The laptop is getting somewhat slow, particularly if I am loading multiple tabs on chrome or I am accessing my work computer remotely through remote desktop. I am wondering:
(1) Should I upgrade this to 8GB RAM to give it another lease on life and then buy a new laptop in a year or so. This looks like it would cost $50 or so (https://www.amazon.com/Memory-IBM-Lenovo-ThinkPad-X301-DDR3-10600/dp/B009BS5XCW). Long term I hope to repurpose this into a kid's laptop (my daughter is almost three, so maybe she would need one in two or three years), so maybe the extra RAM could help further extend the shelf-life of this.
(2) Spend the money towards a new laptop now. I would probably get a Lenovo T460 or something similar (http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/t-series/t460/). I have an aversion to HP and lesser extent Dell due to past quality issues. I wouldn't spend the $2k that my dad dropped in 2009, so honestly the specs might be roughly similar except for a newer processor and fresh everything else (battery, screen, etc.)
We theoretically get up to 25 Mbps with Comcast and have a relatively new / high quality modem and router so I assume this is a hardware problem rather than an internet problem.
Windows 10 (64 bit) Intel Core 2 Duo U9600 @1.60GHz 4GB of Ram 125 GB SSD (only 29 GB used, I am not a space hog)
The laptop is getting somewhat slow, particularly if I am loading multiple tabs on chrome or I am accessing my work computer remotely through remote desktop. I am wondering:
(1) Should I upgrade this to 8GB RAM to give it another lease on life and then buy a new laptop in a year or so. This looks like it would cost $50 or so (https://www.amazon.com/Memory-IBM-Lenovo-ThinkPad-X301-DDR3-10600/dp/B009BS5XCW). Long term I hope to repurpose this into a kid's laptop (my daughter is almost three, so maybe she would need one in two or three years), so maybe the extra RAM could help further extend the shelf-life of this.
(2) Spend the money towards a new laptop now. I would probably get a Lenovo T460 or something similar (http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/t-series/t460/). I have an aversion to HP and lesser extent Dell due to past quality issues. I wouldn't spend the $2k that my dad dropped in 2009, so honestly the specs might be roughly similar except for a newer processor and fresh everything else (battery, screen, etc.)
We theoretically get up to 25 Mbps with Comcast and have a relatively new / high quality modem and router so I assume this is a hardware problem rather than an internet problem.