Don’t buy a cheap Currys laptop
After seeing a client’s HP 15-GW0502sa laptop bought from Currys in a rush, I needed to write up why this was such a poor purchase. Its a very slow laptop. Only purchased in February for £399, it has been reduced a couple of times since then – but still doesn’t represent good value.
When I got to it at 3 months old, it was so slow. It would take minutes to start up. Just clicking a simple task like opening an application or a folder would leave you staring at a spinning wheel or a ‘not responding’ warning.
Looking at the Performance in Task Manager, typically showed 40-50% on the CPU processor. Not brilliant, you wouldn’t expect a lot of speed from that Athlon Silver. However the Disk performance showed it running at 100% pretty much continually. Looking in Device Manager showed a WD 1TB (1000GB) Blue drive, model WD10SPZX. A particularly slow 5400rpm old style mechanical drive.
Just shocking that retailers are still selling laptops with this sort of drive. Quick swap out with a fast SSD drive and the laptop is transformed – the owner could not believe how much difference it made. Starting up in under 30s now, no delays, no spinning wheels, no warnings.
Get the spec right first time, don’t keep paying the price in slow performance for the life of the laptop.
Memory Sieve
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