Student blogs

How to work 16x faster on your laptop

Christmas is coming and yet many of us want to continue working on the computer during our holidays. Fortunately, we are becoming more and more mobile – writing, reading and 1000 other things can be done comfortably from our laptop. Nevertheless – there is always room for improvement, even when it comes to our laptop performance!

If your Laptop don’t possess an SSD, get a new one!

During my internship in 2011, my supervisor from the R&D department infected me with the spirit of Solid State Drives (SSDs). At that time, these things were quite unaffordable. Nevertheless, I took my meager internship pay and bought a 128 GB hard drive for 250 €. Even though the price was high, this was definitely the right choice! It ran smoothly in my computer up until a year ago. After that I bought a newer model, and the old SSD is now on my mother’s computer.  It is still running after 6 years of use!

In addition to the immense speed advantages during booting as with every single program start, the probability of failure (=total data loss) is lower because mechanical components are missing altogether. This reduces your waiting time on your computer and simultaneously increases security (if you don’t have all of your data already in the cloud anyway). Nowadays, virtually every sensible laptop has an SSD installed. If you should have an older laptop model without an SSD and don’t have the money for a new laptop, check out my tip No. 2!

If you can’t afford a new laptop, buy an SSD instead!

Seriously. Ignore the haters. Nowadays, compared to 2011, the disks are dirt cheap – the best models (giving Samsung a plug) start for 256 GB at 90 pounds. Be aware, that other SSDs are not that fast, but are still an improvement! 4000 five-star amazon ratings speak for themselves! Not convinced yet?

I was able to use my netbook from 2010 (bad processor, 2 GB Ram, 800 pixel) until April of this year after rebuild 2014 for almost every office task. Believe it or not: my 300 Euro netbook was faster than many other “elite laptops” with classic HDD.

I am so convinced of this technology that even in my old Research Assistant position in Germany, that after the professor’s OK, I converted all 20 work computers adding 256 GB SSD’s. Initial measurements showed a time saving factor of 16. Unusable computers from 2007 became powerful office warriors after a painstaking conversion (old bios, some other troubles). Time investment for the rebuild + reinstallation of all components per workstation: approximately 6 hours, with exercise ~ 4 hours. Future time savings: Priceless!

The installation is not too difficult. First of all, you will find super explanatory videos on Youtube (as well as everything else). If you still don’t dare, get someone with a bit of computer knowledge (and time) to do it. If your laptop is really old (bought before 2010), I would suggest to get a very well-informed expert.

Let me know what you think of this technology + what you would suggest for additions (I’m curious!)

Best Greetings and Merry Xmas

 

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