{"id":834,"date":"2010-09-03T09:55:51","date_gmt":"2010-09-03T16:55:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/greg.porter.name\/wordpress\/?p=834"},"modified":"2010-09-03T10:13:12","modified_gmt":"2010-09-03T17:13:12","slug":"will-a-cheap-solid-state-disk-make-your-old-laptop-faster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/greg.porter.name\/wordpress\/?p=834","title":{"rendered":"Will a cheap solid state disk make your old laptop faster? Yes."},"content":{"rendered":"

I have an older HP Compaq tc4200 Tablet PC<\/a>.\u00a0 I like it.\u00a0 If you’ve never used a tablet before, where you can opt to use a pen for input, you should try one.\u00a0 It’s great for applications that are primarily mouse click driven, like browsing the Intertubes or doing practice exams.<\/p>\n

I recently reloaded mine with Windows 7, which was ridiculously easy.\u00a0 Windows 7 runs no slower on it, and perhaps a bit faster.\u00a0 Windows 7 natively loads all required drivers, so you won’t spend hours looking for the NIC driver or whatever for this model.\u00a0 I like Windows 7.<\/p>\n

Still as an older machine, it’s a bit slow.\u00a0 The hard drive seems to thrash.\u00a0 People say that replacing the internal hard drive with an inexpensive solid state drive (SSD) helps.\u00a0 Will it make any real difference?\u00a0 Yes.\u00a0 I did it, and I’m glad I did.<\/p>\n

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Like I said this is HP Compaq tc4200 Tablet PC.\u00a0 It has 2GB of RAM in it (the max).\u00a0 It came with an 60GB 5400RPM ATA\/IDE Hitachi Travelstar 5K100, model <\/a>HTS541060G9AT00<\/a>.<\/span> It is loaded with a default load of Windows 7 Enterprise, fully patched.<\/p>\n

Here’s some quickie benchmarks:<\/p>\n