Bought the wife a used/refreshed laptop a couple months back.
Nothing fancy i5 Gen 7 8gb ram and 128gb SSD.
This is mainly a web browsing machine with some photo viewing not much more.
Well once we figure this Cricut machine out that will probably be on there as well.
Anyway the keyboard went wonky. After 5-10 minutes it went into some sort of shortcut/function mode and a few keys would work but would just bring up different options based upon the program you were in.
For instance you hit the M key and the sound would mute, hit the B and a bookmark tab would open but it would stop typing. You could close the program and reopen but have the same issue and that issue would continue with all programs until you reset the computer.
It would do it every time you were on the computer and not just randomly.

So I took it back told the fella the issue hoping he would fix the keyboard. He says do you care if I just give you a newer computer instead of sitting here trying to diagnose and fix it.
I had already backed up the few files we had one there so he gave me an i5 8th Gen with an LED display, 8gb ram, and a 128gb NVme hard drive.

Wow, the display is way better on this machine.
Is the NVme thing actually better.

Also is it a good idea to store photos on an external drive or if I buy a 1TB NVme to upgrade the space from 128gb and store photos on there will it slow the computer way down?

I doubt you'd see day to day performance increases. But yes, the NVMe, as I understand it, talks directly with the processor and doesn't have to go through a controller as the SSD does.

Is it an M2 instead of SATA SSD?
Most of the Latitudes we order now have a little stick SSD (M2) instead of a 2.5" SATA.

Not sure if there's a performance benefit or if it's a packaging thing.

Buying the bigger NVMe SSD shouldn't slow it down as long as you buy a name brand SSD with a good read speed rating. I would probably go with Samsung, Western Digital or Crucial because they generally get good reviews. I'm sure there are other good brands too but those are names I recognize.

If you are frequently moving LARGE files (video editing for example) NVME will be a noticeable benefit. I have two 1TB sticks on my I9 rig I built in the spring. Most users will never notice a difference between NVme or a standard SSD. The tech itself is definitely faster, but not in a way that is applicable in most real world uses.

They also run HOT. Hot enough that I’m even more paranoid about their longevity than I am normal SSD. Have a backup plan for any vital data, just to be safe.

You can always run multiple drives and an external USB is a great way to store things like photos on. Photo files aren’t terribly big by todays standards and USB 3.0 is plenty fast to open image files for viewing.

My current PC is an I9 processor with a 3080 GPU with 64gb of Ddr5 RAM. My OS is on a 2tb SSD. A second 4tb SSD holds my working data and general storage. 1 TB NMVE for Photoshop and a second for games. Gaming boot time isn’t any faster from the NVME than the SATA SSD. I’ve got a couple of USB external drives I use to back up data and for long term storage of files I don’t want clogging up the works. I’ve got thousands of photos I shot that I’ll probably never look at again but I’m afraid to toss just in case. I’m something off a digital pack rat…

quote:

Is the NVMe thing actually better.

Substantially better.

I benchmark drives all the time and NVMe blow away SATA SSD which blows away SATA spinning drives.

You need to attach to the PCIe to make it work.
Modern mb's use M2 slot but you can also insert the NVMe drive into a PCIe adaptor as well.

Also 3X PCIe busses are common but the latest mb's are 4X so those Drives are the fastest.
Example: Samsung 980 Pro in a current motherboard that supports 4X.

As Rush always said "Do not doubt me".

quote:

Nothing fancy i5 Gen 7 8gb ram and 128gb SSD.

This would only support a 3X NVMe on the PCIe either by M2 slot or an adaptor attached to a PCIe slot. A Gen 4 NVMe will work but not as fast.

If attempting to use an adaptor with USB then don't bother as most all the performance will be negated.

quote:

Originally posted by Black92LX:
Also is it a good idea to store photos on an external drive or if I buy a 1TB NVme to upgrade the space from 128gb and store photos on there will it slow the computer way down?

What you store won't affect speed/performance of the drives (the 1TB might be faster than the 128GB). If you are accessing the photos often, there will be better performance with onboard SSD vs anything connected via USB. That might or might not be noticeable.

If you are 'archiving', I'd use USB drives to store the photos - the laptop has a higher risk of damage/failure/theft.

For storage, 2 is 1, 1 is none. If you have a single point of failure risk, you will lose data at some point.