Notebook Longetivity

Not really sure where to ask this, since this forum has no general discussion section.

Anyway, how long do you guys tend to use a notebook for before deciding that it's time to get a new one? I'm growing rather tired of my notebook's slow 5400 RPM HDD and I'm thinking about replacing it with an SSD, but I'm wondering if it wouldn't be better to just put up with it for a bit longer and get a new notebook altogether when Windows 7 and Nehalem laptop CPUs arrive.

 

If your waiting for Nehalem id say its so worth the wait.

 

I've recently made this decision as the Nehalem looks to be a bit of a beast, but ultimately I've decided that I like Dell 640m I'm currently using.

With a hard drive, you could do both. Use the drive you buy now for your existing hardware as a backup for the new Nehalem-powered notebook when that arrives...

 

I say definitely wait for Nehalem and for SSD prices to drop.

In the meantime, you can upgrade the HDD to 7200rpm, 500GB

Why are you findig the HDD slow ?

My current laptop is 3 years old, I hope it will last another 3 years. Just recieved another laptop a few months back, honestly both are fine for day to day tasks like web browsing, programming, video watching. I dont game. The old laptop has 60GB 5400rpm, I will be upgrading to 500gb 7200 rpm soon.

 

Mainly startup/shutdown/hibernation takes forever. With startup specifically, it takes like 2 minutes to load the desktop and another 2-3 for the HDD to start up all the background programs and services and stop spinning so I can actually load Word and Chrome and use the laptop.

I once did a virus scan comparison with my old desktop PC. Despite my desktop at the time having a much slower single-core CPU, half the RAM, and about twice as much data on the HDD, it still finished the scan significantly faster than my laptop did.

 

Well then theres your answer. Your problem is not the HDD but software/windows install.
On my 3 year old laptop, 60gb 5400 rpm (sata), linux install, it takes ~55 secs to get to desktop; on windows XP it takes about 70 secs to get to desktop (It does not have antitvirus though, and I'm excluding bios check time). Those times include whatever time all the processes need to startup, after that I'm free to run my own things.

You can knock minutes off your startup times by doing a leaner windows install, and getting rid of bloatware.

AFAIR, the new laptop with 250GB 7200 rpm drive + much faster CPU boots up 15 sec fasters --- oh yeah 55sec -> 40sec, such a huge difference

I hope my older laptop will last another 3 years, but I'm afraid the LCD will konk out before that. I have a warranty from my CC for another year, so barring acidents, I should get at least another year out of it.

 

Exactly.

I have a four year old Asus 1.6GHz Pentium Mobile (single core) with 5400rpm drive that boots Windows XP in 34 seconds without any mayor tweaks.

A 7200rpm drive will not boot (much) faster than a 5400rpm drive:
http://www.laptopmag.com/review/storage/intel-x25-m.aspx?page=5

In think you're better of doing a clean install and disabling unnecessary back ground processes.

Also, if booting and hibernating quickly is your thing, consider Windows XP.

 

well, phil: for hibernating, xp doesn't help. taking out ram, does, however. but that has other consequencees. and when having less ram, using xp may be better. so in the end, your point is actually correct, but quite indirectly

 

In my experience Vista does hibernate slower than XP (with identical amount of RAM). I can't back it up with hard numbers though.

 

if i were you ,i will wait ,it will worth both time and money

 

This is purely consequential, as I use my notebooks til they either a) become obsolete or b) die. I use mine 24/7/365 and until either of the above clauses are reached. Sometimes they last 2 years sometimes shorter or longer, its all in the hardware, features and durability of the rig.

edit: As for current C2D tech, I don't see it becoming obsolete any time soon as penryn to current can run win 7 flawlessly and do tasks with great aplomb. This is a testament to the C2D family, and how we were sold too much CPU power at their inception then what we needed.

 

liquidxit2, waht typically fails in your laptop ?

 

Interesting point - obsolete depends on your applications, right? Just out of interest, what do you run?

As for the Core 2 Duo being overpowered, heh, if we were running DOS then we coudl stick to 386SLs...

 

All my laptops have survived beyond my inclination to get the latest hardware.

 

The past few would be my compaq and gateways from 1997 and 2004 respectively both had motherboards fail well past warranties, and my averatec 2155 from 2005 did the same. All were well past their prime and no where near worth paying full price replacements. My acer 5672 worked great, but the screen would go bad during gaming or any 3d work, but I got it replaced. But eventually the 1.66 Core duo got maxed too easily for what i did.

My dell on the other hand is still going strong and does what I need it to, but unfortunately is out of warranty.

 

My last laptop lasted me 3 years, now its on server duty.
Another laptop is now with my grandfather - is 4 years old, no hardware changes, no OS reinstallation - 4,5 years of XP and it still works

Our first laptop lasted about 4 odd years, then Windows ME startd to fail, fafter 5 years Linux joined in... something went wrong in that... (and formatting didn't help on ME; even formatting with XP... it was strange)

One of the above point is very good:
It depends what you do.
If you just type word documents you can use a laptop till your hardware completely fails.
If you do a bit of photo editing and buy a laptop that runs well you can use that for quite some time too.

I tend to say that its games that really make a computer "age".

 

I've got a Toshiba Satellite M45 that just turned 4yrs old and going strong. The only issue I've had was with the Hitachi hard drive. It failed about two months after the warranty expired. It was 100GB 5400rpm and I replaced it with a 7200rpm model. With a "clean install" of Windows and the faster drive, boot time dropped from 48 seconds to 36 seconds (XP Home). Apps load noticeably faster, too.

A good 320GB 7200rpm hard drive is only $80. That would be a good stop-gap measure to boost performance while you wait for new hardware (and Win7) to be released...