I have an ancient high-end HP laptop that has been getting wimpy lately. I had already maxed out the RAM in the past but decided to try a new HDD.

I ordered a new drive, a Crucial 2TB SDD and a "drive toaster" from Amazon the other day. I duplicated the existing drive and installed the new one. Now I have double the storage room, AND the laptop runs like greased lightning! I also reinstalled Windows 10 Pro just to have it fresh also, and it's like a brand new computer!

For the record, I bought this one from a friend about 8 years ago for a whopping $40.00. It was top-of-the-line when he got it for his engineering classes at University of Alabama, and had been sitting in a closet for a year or two after that. I did have to buy a new battery for it, and later had to get another power supply as the connector on the power cable broke, but otherwise it is still going strong, especially now that it has a new SDD, and I consider it one of the best purchases that I've ever made! It also reinforces my love of HP computers...

Cheers!

I'm happy for you, really I am, but why all the glory to HP?
You are the one who did all the work, replaced all the bad parts, reinstalled and configured the software > not HP.

A conversation not that long ago at my house about a work PC:

Me: "It's not THAT old."

Son-in-law: "It's old enough to go to Junior High school."

quote:

Originally posted by smschulz:
I'm happy for you, really I am, but why all the glory to HP?
You are the one who did all the work, replaced all the bad parts, reinstalled and configured the software > not HP.

Yes he did and did a great job. But if the laptop had not been a top of the line HP for its time, the refresh wouldn't have been possible. So he gets the credit for both recognizing the potential and retrofitting it for a new life. I'm impressed.

I replaced my laptop last year because it was slowing down and starting to have problems like the sound wouldn't come on even after trying to troubleshoot it. I got it Feb 2017 so it was about 5 years which is usually ow long I keep my computers for; actually that's on the long end.

I was going to give it to a kid as it was a "top of the line" when I bought it. In cleaning the hard drive of my data, I discovered that Windows has a new-to-me command: Reset this PC.

After it reset and updated to the latest Windows, it was good as new again with everything working. If I had known that, I could have just kept it and reset it for my own use. All that I needed was to install the programs I used and restore the data.

quote:

Originally posted by smschulz:
I'm happy for you, really I am, but why all the glory to HP?
You are the one who did all the work, replaced all the bad parts, reinstalled and configured the software > not HP.

It's a solid, quality product! Withstood 4 years of college abuse by a teenage boy, then over 8 years with me not being so gentle with it, and still going strong!

HDDs wear out, no matter what brand they are. This one was over 12 years old, so the SDD upgrade only made sense. Maxing out the RAM is something that only made sense, and has nothing to do with what brand the computer is! Battery packs? Everyone with a laptop knows they have limited life, so again... not brand dependent.

What IS brand dependent is the main system has been rock-solid and is still running like new! Pulling the HDD or memory from this thing takes LITERALLY under 30 seconds! Compare that to the hours it took for me to put a new battery in my daughter's laptop a year or so ago. This is an EliteBook system, and I cannot sing it's praises enough, especially for only costing me $40.00 to begin with!

Cheers!

quote:

Originally posted by wrightd:
<<snip>>
Yes he did and did a great job. But if the laptop had not been a top of the line HP for its time, the refresh wouldn't have been possible. So he gets the credit for both recognizing the potential and retrofitting it for a new life. I'm impressed.

Thank you! I just hate throwing away good stuff that still has a serviceable life, and this is no exception! Chalk it up to being raised by a father who grew up during the depression. My brother and I would always say that "he could get a week out of a glass of ice water". We didn't throw anything away without fixing it every time possible. Compared to today's "disposable society", I prefer to repair and reuse when possible.

quote:

Originally posted by Rey HRH:
I replaced my laptop last year because it was slowing down and starting to have problems like the sound wouldn't come on even after trying to troubleshoot it. I got it Feb 2017 so it was about 5 years which is usually ow long I keep my computers for; actually that's on the long end.

I was going to give it to a kid as it was a "top of the line" when I bought it. In cleaning the hard drive of my data, I discovered that Windows has a new-to-me command: Reset this PC.

After it reset and updated to the latest Windows, it was good as new again with everything working. If I had known that, I could have just kept it and reset it for my own use. All that I needed was to install the programs I used and restore the data.

Windows (or should I say Windoze) based computers have a nasty habit of slowing down after a few years of regular use and have to be "reset" to bring them back to life. I did that recently with this HP as I started getting the "Blue Screen of Death" on a frequent basis, and reinstalling Windoze fixed it. Thankfully it allowed me to keep all of my files, programs and settings so I didn't have to reinstall anything! (Sorry "smschulz", but this was not related to HP as it is a Microsoft issue, so I still sing HP's praises! )

The Windows Installer program is available for free download from the Microsoft website and will handle everything for you...

quote:

Originally posted by bronicabill:
I ordered a new drive, a Crucial 2TB SDD and a "drive toaster" from Amazon the other day. I duplicated the existing drive and installed the new one. Now I have double the storage room, AND the laptop runs like greased lightning!

Yep. Switching from a HDD (old style spinning disk hard drive) to a SSD (a much faster/more responsive new style solid state hard drive, kinda akin to an internal thumb drive) is an easy way to get a noticeable boost in apparent speed.

quote:

I also reinstalled Windows 10 Pro just to have it fresh also, and it's like a brand new computer!

That's another easy option. A format and reinstall of your operating system lets you start with a clean slate, without much of the leftover file fragments, registry errors, and other bloat that accumulates over the years.

^^^ My only point is that it has little to do with HP as a brand.
I have built hundreds of computers from scratch that have outlasted many a Dell, HP or Lenovo.
Every computer over the last ump-teen years start with a basic motherboard chipset and CPU.
I only use Intel based motherboard (no AMD) and use mostly Gigabyte or Asus but have used ASRock, MSI and SuperMicro on occasion.
These are of equal if not better quality to HP, Dell, Lenovo (most of the prepackaged computers).
The other components are the same basically as everyone else.
WHERE the big company computers make sense is with support and documentation.
Otherwise if you are not organized or have a pro-builder for support ~ it just becomes a franken-computer.

So I still say good-for-you on the rebuild no matter who made it- it's still YOU not HP ( that's a compliment btw ).
I suspect the increase in performance is largely due to the better disk drive and the fresh more efficient OS.

quote:

But if the laptop had not been a top of the line HP for its time, the refresh wouldn't have been possible.

^^ maybe yes maybe no ~ it all depends on the specs and use.

I built my wife a tower many years (I think 13?) for her to do photoshop processing on. I had never built a computer before, but for someone who was planning on photo (not video) editing, there just didn't seem to be an appropriate option out there. Used an ASUS motherboard and Intel I5 processor, and it was very fast and great at the time. I did have a motherboard failure, don't remember exactly the problem, but replaced it with an ASROC MB, kept the rest of the components, and added a SSD as the operating system drive. I think this was like 6 years ago, but not sure. It boots in half the time from previous (13 seconds from pressing the button to input the password), and still seems faster than all the other devices in the house, at least two of which are less than 2 years old. I don't do games, or video editing, and have realized the hardware of the previous decade is simply way more than I need, provided adequate memory (RAM and SSD). I could comfortably use an old (2012) Dell laptop without any loss of the functions I need on a daily basis. Though the Dell Latitude 550 I'm currently posting from is from 2019 and is very nice.