Advice for old Toshiba Satellite A300

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xyeovillian

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#257105 15-Sep-2019 17:13

I have been given a Toshiba Satellite A300 I have installed win10 and it runs very well but its a bit slow, am I expecting too much from this old laptop currently with 4GB ram.
Would either a 256 GB SSD or more ram be better obviously the SSD would be cheaper.
Or has anyone got 2x4GB ram lying around, they would sell me?

sqishy

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#2318191 15-Sep-2019 19:02

Ram likely best to start with but both would help. I used to have an older type laptop with mechanical drive and changed out for SSD but didn't see much speed increase. Could be the way the older SATA's worked i.e. slower rate.

lNomNoml

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#2318211 15-Sep-2019 19:35

sqishy:
Ram likely best to start with but both would help. I used to have an older type laptop with mechanical drive and changed out for SSD but didn't see much speed increase. Could be the way the older SATA's worked i.e. slower rate.

Agreed getting the SSD and RAM won't really help the CPU and chipset is very slow, personally I would put it back on Windows 7 and call it a day. If you need a laptop let me know I've got 3 I need to sell.

xpd

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#2318220 15-Sep-2019 20:17

Get more geek friends, one will eventually give you a decent laptop for nothing ;)

XPD / Gavin

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sbiddle

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#2318335 16-Sep-2019 07:01

4GB RAM is still sufficient to run Windows 10. Personally I'd spend $40 on a SSD which would deliver a significant performance boost. It will never be a rocket ship but a SSD will definately improve things.

1101

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#2318372 16-Sep-2019 09:25

4Gb RAM is fine. Ive sold a few i3's with 4GB RAM, they ran ok for day to day use .

The issue will be the age of the thing. Its just old.
A SSD will help a lot, but no getting around the fact its a VERY old laptop.

Its got $0 value. Dont spend any money on it .
Wipe and reload may help .

yitz

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#2318411 16-Sep-2019 10:59

Hardware acceleration is just not there for things like video decode, cryptography etc..

It would be a sucky experience using laptops of this vintage having the CPU pegged at 100% playing back 480p YouTube and the interface lagging.

An Everis or some cheap laptop with AMD E2-9000e that does have the hardware acceleration would perform better.