Ten year old W10 laptop - time to replace

Just realised my "new" laptop is actually coming up to ten years old and with support for W10 coming to an end next year that it is time to start thinking of getting a new one.

Currently have an Acer i5-420U with 8GB of RAM and a 1TB HDD. A brief look suggests that the sweet spot for a reasonable home use laptop is 16GB with a 512GB SSD and it is this latter figure which concerns me as my current drive is currently 50% full.

But wondering how much of that is old crud which I don't actually need to reference in the future and could just put the old laptop drive in a caddy for if and when I do and just copy over the essentials to a new laptop?

Currently looking at the Lenovo range and wondering how reputable they are. Budget is around £500/600. Usage is basically just email and browsing with get_iplayer and CD ripping as the only really niche applications with the laptop being the base copy of all my downloaded music with copies also held on tablet and phone and USB button in the car.

Any thoughts please?

Edited by gomezz (Fri 26-Apr-24 10:08:35)

Lenovo I think are ok. I have used Acer for gaming laptops and usually get a lot for the money. Last year I sorted a new laptop for my mum and Dell were giving some good options for price to performance so worth a look at. 1TB SSDs are becoming more standard so I think you could easily get a decent spec laptop with 16GB and 1TB SSD depending on your other requirements (such as screen size as that can make a big difference on price). For CD ripping I assume you would just use an external USB drive rather than needing a laptop with one built in? Finally, are you wedded to Intel or would you consider AMD which could provide better value for money?

Thanks for that. Looking back at what I use a laptop for I am thinking that maybe I should down-size in specs to something much cheaper. I already have an external HDD which I got from for when I last changed laptop but never actually got round to using so I could offload all my save music and other user data to that and just refresh that as and when a new laptop starts filling up.

I actually have finished ripping all my old contemporary music CDs so it is only the classical music CDs still to do which I never quite get round to doing - putting the CD in the hi-fi player at home or streaming Radio 3 while out and about seems to do me these days.

Install Ubuntu and treat yourself to something else with the money!

It is an option. And one that still allows me to use get_iplayer.

In reply to a post by gomezz:

It is an option. And one that still allows me to use get_iplayer.

It is a good option if it allows you to keep the laptop going, and it does what you need. plenty of Linux distros out there to try.

Depending upon your requirements and abilities. Some software is just unobtainable for Linux and a lot is targeted at a particular version of a particular distribution.

For example, I use Quartus FPGA design software. It just works on any version of Windows. There is a Linux version available but it is targeted at a particular version of Red Hat. Getting it working on any other distribution is either impossible or a matter of finding and installing a host of particular versions of particular dynamic libraries. I use it on an old Mac Mini running Ubuntu (not my favourite, but the only one I could get the software to run with) and it was quite a battle getting it running; and certain aspects still don't work correctly.

If the only requirement is standard stuff - word processing, web browsing, email, etc - Linux is a great choice. But if your requirements are more specialised be prepared for a bit of a struggle; and once you have it working, don't upgrade your distro!

We have well over a year until W10 support stops so no need to rush out and buy a new machine. You can pick up a 500gb SSD for around fifty quid which will give a massive boost in performance to your machine and use your existing 1TB spinny drive as an external drive; you can pick up a hard drive caddy off ebay for a fiver.

@ fifty five pounds and you'll have a better performing laptop.

Way too much online panic about the end of support for W10, far too many machines being scrapped without need.

In reply to a post by TinyMongomery:

Depending upon your requirements and abilities. Some software is just unobtainable for Linux and a lot is targeted at a particular version of a particular distribution.

For example, I use Quartus FPGA design software. It just works on any version of Windows. There is a Linux version available but it is targeted at a particular version of Red Hat. Getting it working on any other distribution is either impossible or a matter of finding and installing a host of particular versions of particular dynamic libraries. I use it on an old Mac Mini running Ubuntu (not my favourite, but the only one I could get the software to run with) and it was quite a battle getting it running; and certain aspects still don't work correctly.

If the only requirement is standard stuff - word processing, web browsing, email, etc - Linux is a great choice. But if your requirements are more specialised be prepared for a bit of a struggle; and once you have it working, don't upgrade your distro!

That is why I said if it does what you need and plenty of Linux distros out there. i know very well that some software will only work or will work better with some distros, da Vinci resolve is a bit iffy about the distro it works on.

It depends on what you are using the machine for, I know people using Linux for producing music, doing graphics stuff, editing videos, 3d stuff and even running a small business, using LibreOffice.

I am thinking of getting a Linux based tablet, depending on price, just for the fun of it.

Microsoft falt for the amount of machines that will be dumped in the next few years, machines that are capable of being used for years, but MS will scare people into buying new.
They have to getting something out of forcing people to buy new machines, i know they sell laptops, but they must get something from other manufactures.
windows itself is not a big moneymaker for MS like it used to be.

Microsoft falt for the amount of machines that will be dumped in the next few years, machines that are capable of being used for years, but MS will scare people into buying new.

A bit like Apple, really.