Question for all laptop owners

[MrWizzard]

For all of you who have owned a laptop. If someone has used a laptop for almost 4 years Usage = 5 days a week 9 hours a day.

Did he get his moneys worth? I have replaced the hard drive for this guy 2x and I have reformatted it about 4 times total.

It has gotten really slow lately and I think it might be time to get a new one.
Can't figure out why it just got slow, no programs loaded recently no viruses but the processor is always at about 30 percent usage when the computer is idling. Any activity sends the processor to 100% for way to long, this happened almost overnight too so I don't think its a fragmented HD either.

I think he has gotten a good amount of use out of it.

Thanks

EDIT for BCYL: I think it may be the MOBO or somethings actually going this time, last six months the computer has failed to boot every once in a while, checksum erros, so I have had to go threw the BIOS to make sure the all settings are ok.

I dont mess around with laptop hardware other than ram and HD heh

 

[BCYL]

Yes he has gotten good use out of it

but if it still satisfy his needs why get a new one? There must be a reason why it's slow now...

 

[GeekDrew]

I think that it served a good life.

 

[MrWizzard]

See original post Thanks

 

[RossMAN]

Yes, he has definitely gotten his moneys worth and should consider a new laptop replacement.

What make and model?

Original purchase price?

Dell has some sweet deals on the Dell Inspiron 9300 laptop.

 

[The Stigenator]

time for a new laptop.. mine is 2.5 years old.. and frankly i would say its time for an upgrade but its running good so its gonna stay.

 

[Triumph]

if it is broken, upgrade. if not, don't bother. for the average user, most modern computers are overkill. my Thinkpad is 3 years old, and is as good as the day i bought it. as I type this I'm using a 600 mhz P3 that I got for free. and it is functionally equivalent to the 2 ghz IBM.

look at the laptops available now. a regular laptop will be 1.7 ghz, 256mb ram, 40 gig hard drive, 14" screen. that's the same thing as my IBM, 3 years later. it's cheaper, video is a bit better, battery life is a bit longer, but not by a huge amount. as far as i'm concerned, computer power peaked for most people in about 2001-2002.

 

[So]

I have a laptop that is 3.5 years old, it has had two new harddrives, although the second one was a voluntary upgrad because I wanted more space, added ram, and the other day, replaced the wrist rest assembly because the left touch pad button was broken, but it has been to many a class with me, and I feel it's done its duty well, and will for a few more years. Plus, it's still (barely) fast enough to play recent games (civ 4) at minimum settings, so it keeps me entertained.

Oh, the DVD/CDRW stopped reading CD's, so I had to replace that too.

Over the years, on maintence I've spent less than $500, the screen is still good, the battery is still good, and thanks to USB 2.0, it handels peripherals well.

Oh, it's this laptop: http://www.anandtech.com/mobile/showdoc.aspx?i=1616

 

[SuperSix]

When was the last time a fresh OS install was done? Sounds like LOTS of spyware sneaked in somehow..

 

[ElFenix]

i've got a 2.5 year old 600m and honestly, there is nothing that is significantly faster (at gaming) and the same size or smaller out there, really. and honestly, there may be stuff that is faster at word, but the computer is already waiting for me anyway.

if that laptop was top of the line 3.5 years ago, i'm thinking 1.2 GHz or so pentium 3. with a gig of ram and a 5400 or 7200 rpm hard drive it *should* feel plenty fast for office work, even on windows xp. are you postively certain that there isn't some spyware or something running hidden on it?

 

[halw]

I have an ooold Toshiba Satalite 2545. Probably at least 6 years old. K6 333 Mhz w/Win98 & 5Gb HDD. Battery is shot but don't use it anyway. The thing doesn't seem to want to die. Not going to retire it for that reason. I defrag every month to six weeks which keeps things as sharp as they can be given the notebooks technology.

This may be the extreme but, it serves a purpuse for me.

FYI, have an newer laptop which I travel with. As well as, a couple of desktops. All are networked and all but the Toshiba are running Xandros Linux distro.

 

[MrWizzard]

Im positive it's got 0 spyware, clearing the CMOS seamed to fix it though.

It's a 1.7 P4 256 ram which is low for win xp. It seems to be ok now so we will see how much longer it holds out.

Thanks for the help.

EDIT: fixed processor speed