Hard drive or CPU

[behzad]

When I output to the web, a large site takes a long time to process. Is this processing CPU based or Hard drive

Yes I know I have an old computer but surely it is not CPU because when viewing my cpu and memory this is what is says (see below)

My system Memory is 8G, As you can see in the chart it is only utilizing under 50% of processing speed.

btw the info below is when it is processing output for the web.

[Acorn]

It will be system memory.

Other processes take up RAM too so you are probably having lots of swapping in and out of RAM onto the HD.

Acorn

[handrawn]

if your computer HD is an HDD [mechanical] swaping it for an SSD [solid state] should help access times, but this is not a straightforward task with most modern laptops that need disassembling

more memory may help too if your computer is upgradable but mkae sure you get the right kind - go to someone like crucial.com and check what you need, you don't have to buy it from them [you can also check compatible SSD there if you wish]

[behzad]

Thank you. I was checking their SSD drives and thought of buying one. Also I maxed out the memory already to 8M. So your saying the SSD will for sure speed things up? What percentage am I looking at?

[pauland]

Thank you. I was checking their SSD drives and thought of buying one. Also I maxed out the memory already to 8M. So your saying the SSD will for sure speed things up? What percentage am I looking at?

Enough to make you wonder why you haven't done it already and wished you'd done it ages ago. It is the BEST upgrade for old computers.

[handrawn]

it will increase access times - which is the equivalent of saying you have more lanes on your highway - but achievable speed is still depentant on traffic - bootup and response time should generally improve too

you can compare the way a computer processes information to the way a city handles traffic, there are fast roads, slow roads, clearways and bottlenecks, and it always depends on how many processes want to travel [ have access] at the same time - so the best I could say without knowledge of your computer and what is installed and how you use it is: it will maximise the theoretical speed your computer is capable of when swapping data in and out of memory and executing data transfers; it will also eliminate one pontntial source of mechanical failure and make the computer, if it is a laptop, safer to lug around [although nothing lasts for ever, but modern SSD's are good - get one that is larger than you need for system/storage within budget constraints so there is 'headroom', and buy a reputable make, I use samsung EVO]

all that said, if your computer is long in tooth seriously consider replacing it - yes a hasstle and expense, but consider it... windows 10 is becoming less forgiving of older hardware and that affects speed also... and it save you the bother of making the changes which is never 100% risk-free

if you store TB's of data though [external] HDD is still the way to go on grounds of cost

EDIT - when I upgraded my 2014 vintage HP Pavilion laptop two years ago, I experienced the imporvement that Paul has just indicated

[behzad]

Thank you everyone for the great advice. Possibly best to buy a new computer and retire this one https://support.hp.com/ca-en/document/c04285001
It has 8 G of Ram now on win 10.

[pauland]

Thank you everyone for the great advice. Possibly best to buy a new computer and retire this one https://support.hp.com/ca-en/document/c04285001
It has 8 G of Ram now on win 10.

Wow an 11" screen!

My wife has a Dell laptop. It's long in the tooth ( DELL LATITUDE E5440, 2014? )
but an i5. I bought it second-hand.
She used to complain it was a bit slow. Then I put an SSD into it and she's not complained about it since. She also has a computer supplied from work, with a HD. She moans how slow it is.

SSDs are cheap for modest capacities.

[handrawn]

depends if you want to do the work to fit the SSD - not too bad spec-wise - my pavilion is a bit bigger, but the improvement was noticable

you can always remove the SSD if you decide on new computer later, put it in a caddy and use it as external

11 inch screen indeed, my eyes would cross ! - my pavilion is 15 inch and that's too small for most of what I do

[pauland]

This is *probably* representative of the work required to upgrade to an SSD. You will need to clone your HD to the SSD and you may run into issues with some copy protection schemes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fd0HlIpcbL4