Wednesday, January 30, 2019

Speeding Up My 8 Year Old Laptop (Part One)

I've got an old Acer laptop or notebook or whatever they're called and It is just dragging.  Not only have I had it 8 years but it had probably been on the market a couple of years before I bought it. I've always dual booted my computers between the latest release of Ubuntu and Windows 10's developer version, using Ubuntu most of the time. But everything drags.

I always install the freshest release of Ubuntu and everything drags.  It takes a couple of minutes to boot, then Firefox takes 30 seconds to load and all the other programs take a while, then when I get into Windows that just takes that much longer.

So I bought a Kingston 120GB SDD for $20.00 on Amazon and Ubuntu flies now, and Windows, well that has been an utter failure.   I don't have a copy of Windows since it's on a separate partition on my old hard drive so for now, it's Ubuntu 18.10.  Ubuntu boots in just under 30 seconds and Firefox starts in tow or three seconds.  I quit using Chrome because it would seem to stall my computer, but this weekend when I redo everything I'll get back with Chrome.  I'm not too worried about Google tracking me and there are a few things that Chrome does better.

This weekend I'll put my old hard drive in and follow some instructions I've found on Microsoft's website and I'll hopefully have windows working.
Until then it's Canonical all the way.

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