14 year old PCs are quite capable for may everyday use
I got a core 2 duo (3gb of ram and a HDD as a boot drive, really ancient I know) computer, it’s the only computer I have and I absolutely hate it since it sucks, even with Linux (xfce as a desktop) it takes so long to boot (usually 3 to 4 minutes, windows took like 6 to 7) and not to mention it being so laggy it struggles with launching Firefox and for example a file browser at the same time, and loading a webpage also takes a long time (around 20 seconds for Google, YouTube about 30 s)
Yeah, these computers are really just unusable even for really lightweight work, yeah “upgrade to a SSD, it will be blazing fast”, wouldn’t that just speed up the boot time? The least important thing? Since like I can just walk somewhere and then come back before it boots, but when I’m waiting for a webpage to load or a program to load up it’s really that I do have to wait there, doing nothing in the meantime
An SSD really is the solution. You believe it just speeds up boot time, but it does speed up nearly everything else too.
Your Webpage? Your Browser loads it, stores new data into the cache and stalls while waiting for the HDD. Or it knows elements are in the cache and stalls waiting for them.
You click on the application menu? You PC tries to load 20 icons, tiny amounts of data an SSD has ready in a microsecond. Your HDD takes a full second because the seek between the 20 places where the icons are on the HDD takes so long.
I have some very old PCs I manage (mainly for relatives) and one couple uses a Core 2 Duo E6400 which should be quite similar to your PC. This PC is very usable for daily browsing with Ubuntu 22.04, boot time is about 25 seconds, then about 10 seconds to load up ebay. (I admit I optimized boot time quite a bit) The other PC they have is even slower than that, I just do not remember the exact CPU right now. That one is even used for old browser games similar to candy crush.
Of course it is not what I would use given the choice. I want to compile code in seconds, watch videos in glorious 4k and play a 3D game from time to time. But for them it works perfectly well, so well that they deny my offers to upgrade them
IMO, it’ll probably still be slow at a lot of things. The gen-6 i5-U laptops we at my job use have SSDs and 8GB ram (granted, also running windows because required for some software) and they’re still really slow compared to things like my personal desktop and laptop. Boot times are fine at least, but web browsing isn’t as quick and responsive as I’m used to (<2 seconds per page). They probably take more like 10 pages to load pretty basic pages (no videos).
Still, probably a ton faster with an SSD than without one.
It would help the boot time but also loading software. But I agree a Core 2 Duo is pretty much cooked at this point.
I just replaced a Core 2 Quad in my server, which mostly is a file server and database, that sort of thing. It was doing fine until I started trying to do virtual machines on it (running Home Assistant), and that just killed it. But as a machine I’d be using directly? Nah.
My desktop machine was an i5 from about 2015 and was fine, but I recently upgraded the desktop and put the guts of that in the server.
I got a core 2 duo (3gb of ram and a HDD as a boot drive, really ancient I know) computer, it’s the only computer I have and I absolutely hate it since it sucks, even with Linux (xfce as a desktop) it takes so long to boot (usually 3 to 4 minutes, windows took like 6 to 7) and not to mention it being so laggy it struggles with launching Firefox and for example a file browser at the same time, and loading a webpage also takes a long time (around 20 seconds for Google, YouTube about 30 s)
Yeah, these computers are really just unusable even for really lightweight work, yeah “upgrade to a SSD, it will be blazing fast”, wouldn’t that just speed up the boot time? The least important thing? Since like I can just walk somewhere and then come back before it boots, but when I’m waiting for a webpage to load or a program to load up it’s really that I do have to wait there, doing nothing in the meantime
An SSD really is the solution. You believe it just speeds up boot time, but it does speed up nearly everything else too.
Your Webpage? Your Browser loads it, stores new data into the cache and stalls while waiting for the HDD. Or it knows elements are in the cache and stalls waiting for them.
You click on the application menu? You PC tries to load 20 icons, tiny amounts of data an SSD has ready in a microsecond. Your HDD takes a full second because the seek between the 20 places where the icons are on the HDD takes so long.
I have some very old PCs I manage (mainly for relatives) and one couple uses a Core 2 Duo E6400 which should be quite similar to your PC. This PC is very usable for daily browsing with Ubuntu 22.04, boot time is about 25 seconds, then about 10 seconds to load up ebay. (I admit I optimized boot time quite a bit) The other PC they have is even slower than that, I just do not remember the exact CPU right now. That one is even used for old browser games similar to candy crush.
Of course it is not what I would use given the choice. I want to compile code in seconds, watch videos in glorious 4k and play a 3D game from time to time. But for them it works perfectly well, so well that they deny my offers to upgrade them
What makes you think that an SSD won’t help with the rest of the operations?
Every time I upgrade a computer from HDD to SSD, it injects new life to it.
IMO, it’ll probably still be slow at a lot of things. The gen-6 i5-U laptops we at my job use have SSDs and 8GB ram (granted, also running windows because required for some software) and they’re still really slow compared to things like my personal desktop and laptop. Boot times are fine at least, but web browsing isn’t as quick and responsive as I’m used to (<2 seconds per page). They probably take more like 10 pages to load pretty basic pages (no videos).
Still, probably a ton faster with an SSD than without one.
It would help the boot time but also loading software. But I agree a Core 2 Duo is pretty much cooked at this point.
I just replaced a Core 2 Quad in my server, which mostly is a file server and database, that sort of thing. It was doing fine until I started trying to do virtual machines on it (running Home Assistant), and that just killed it. But as a machine I’d be using directly? Nah.
My desktop machine was an i5 from about 2015 and was fine, but I recently upgraded the desktop and put the guts of that in the server.
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