Can I upgrade my incredibly, incredibly old laptop?

January 27, 2018 11:12 AM

Is it realistic to try and improve performance on my 2009 Acer laptop? What little things can I do to make it better?

I have had this laptop since 2010. I would absolutely love to do something to improve the performance & speed - it's incredibly, incredibly slow, both for the programs themselves and the internet.

Is this a realistic goal, or just not worth it? If I can avoid buying a new laptop, it would be great - it feels as though it would be wasteful. I don't use this laptop very often, just at home probably a few times a week. I don't need it to run video or play games on it or anything that requires a crazy amount of RAM.

What are some steps I could take to make it better? Both hardware and software options would be great to hear, whether it's that I could upgrade the RAM or that I should download something to help clean out the C drive or whatever.

Here are some of the technical specs, of which I am sure I am forgetting something:

Operating system: Windows 7

Manufacturer: Acer

Model: Aspire 5253

Processor: AMD E-350 Processor 1.60Ghz

Installed memory (RAM): 4.00 GB (3.73 usable)

System type: 64-bit operating system


Not sure what else is relevant but am happy to jump in and provide it.

Thank you!

posted by amicamentis to Computers & Internet (14 answers total)

You could upgrade the memory to 8GB for under $100. That would bring a modest improvement in usability. Nothing else is remotely worthwhile. I used to have an AMD E-350 laptop and that thing was so unbelievably slow for just basic web browsing.

You can also get a refurb old Thinkpad for less than $300 that will blow your mind at how fast it is in comparison. (I just picked that link at random; there are a million deals like that for Lenovos because they're retired business machines. I used to have that exact model at work and it's solid.)
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 11:27 AM on January 27, 2018

Go to task manager and see where you are bottle necked. Also run Ccleaner. And reinstalling Windows can often help.

Those cheap amd processors are not good, so it may be a lost cause. At a pinch I'd look into installing Linux.
posted by Sebmojo at 11:35 AM on January 27, 2018

The biggest upgrade you could make would be to swap in an SSD instead of your hard drive for $50-100. The RAM would help but the SSD would be a major performance boost compared to the RAM. But honestly money on either would be better spent towards a new laptop for a few hundred dollars.
posted by noloveforned at 11:36 AM on January 27, 2018

And if you do buy a new(/used) laptop don't buy one with a spinning drive (it's not clear in qxn's link but i suspect it's spinning). get one with an SSD or install one yourself. It's the difference between a bicycle and a motorcycle.
posted by noloveforned at 11:38 AM on January 27, 2018

A few years back I put an SSD into a 2007 era Toshiba laptop and it made a significant difference. I used it for a couple of years after that, running windows 8 and 10, before upgrading to another laptop.
posted by DarkForest at 12:47 PM on January 27, 2018

Do you regularly run Disk Cleanup, along with the extra step to remove old Restore Points? I find my ancient laptop speeds up significantly once I've done that. See the Run Disk Cleanup instructions here.
posted by essexjan at 1:41 PM on January 27, 2018

I'm on a Lenovo Thinkpad T410 since my previous laptop met with a sad end. It's older, but it's rock solid, 8 gb RAM, i5 processor. 165 off Craigslist. 200 or so on ebay.
posted by theora55 at 5:00 PM on January 27, 2018

Ditch windows and install a lightweight Linux variant. There are tons of them (I prefer LXLE for no particular reason). Seriously, I have done this on several old machines and the difference is night and day. My non tech-savvy wife also never even noticed the difference. It is easy and you don't have to sink any money into it.
posted by Literaryhero at 7:34 PM on January 27, 2018

You are probably better off upgrading to a new laptop, if you can afford it. Your biggest bottleneck is your rather wimpy CPU compared to current offerings and nothing much is going to improve that. I wouldn't waste money on a SSD for this low powered laptop. 2009 is a long time ago in computer performance.

Here is a more recent Acer Aspire with an Intel® Core™ i3 at 2.6 GHz. If you look at its benchmark performance score on Passmark it rates 3781. Your current AMD CPU rates only 770. That's an almost 5 times performance increase. You will definitely notice a 5 times performance increase. Any modifications you make to your current laptop will pale in comparison.
posted by JackFlash at 7:48 PM on January 27, 2018

Your computer's processor is really, really slow, so you're not going to be able to do much to speed it up. An SSD will definitely help, but web browsing in particular is still likely to be slow. More RAM isn't likely to make ton of difference in this case.

I would second the case for buying a refurbished laptop. Dell has refurbs for very little money at https://www.dellrefurbished.com/ and they have a short warranty. Look at the Dell Outlet Twitter account for deals. There are decent laptops there now for $200.

HP Elitebooks from 2011 or newer with Core i5 and Core i7 processors are widely available on eBay for around $150. (An SSD will make a big difference on a faster computer like the Dells or the Elitebooks).
posted by cnc at 9:01 PM on January 27, 2018

Anything you spend on a notebook with these specs would be better put towards any newer model, possibly even a chromebook or tablet.

The 4GB RAM is likely the biggest limitation on the computer for web browsing and non-game apps.

The best thing you can do to speed up browsing is to install an ad blocker. This will greatly the CPU, RAM, and network impact of any ads being loaded on pages, and costs nothing.
posted by zippy at 9:45 PM on January 27, 2018

In addition to an ad blocker, if you use uBlock Origin there's another free and open source product from the same guy called uMatrix which will allow you to block everything except text, on a site-by-site basis. That can greatly increase the speed and number of tabs you can have open.

Most of the articles linked to from MetaFilter are readable this way, for example, even on an older laptop with less RAM than yours. (Running Linux, though, in my case.) I would agree that if you're going to spend any money it's probably better spent on a newer or heftier laptop, even a used one.
posted by XMLicious at 11:29 PM on January 27, 2018

I upgraded an ancient laptop with a SSD and memory and it made a difference but web browsing was still terrible and, realistically, it only give us about two years extra breathing space. We've now bought a new laptop which leaves the old one for dust.

Having said that, old memory isn't cheap and you have to fit the SSD (which will cost you if you're not comfortable doing it yourself) and you may just find that it's more cost effective to put a few extra dollars in and buy a new laptop.

If you buy a new one, make sure it has a SSD and no less than 8GB memory. You probably don't need 16GB memory.
posted by mr_silver at 2:36 AM on January 28, 2018

I used to have the same laptop! Loved it. I came to recommend the same thing as Literaryhero. Linux has always helped my laptops eke out a little better performance (and it's easier to get rid of everything you don't want). This page has some recommendations for lightweight Linux distributions.
posted by MrBobinski at 5:31 PM on January 29, 2018