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Thread: OS / "computer" on USB stick ?

  1. #31
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    SSD's,, still the biggest boost in computer speed ever.
    all the new nvme's and fast ram in the world wont make the impact a simple hdd to ssd swap will.

    and its a dead simple drop in thing.
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  2. #32
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    My kids learned to 'surf' on an old PC I didn't throw out having installed Linux.
    I think that's about the time I switched to Firefox as well. I was on Opera at the time
    As it was their first foray into playing on computers, so they had no computer memory muscle issues to overcome. My wife(now ex) tho didn't like it, as she grew up on Windows.
    "Where are the files, what are these sda and sdb where's my C drive, where's My Pictures ... "

    I'm pretty sure Ubuntu wasn't around in those days, so it may have been Mandrake or KDE can't recall.
    I didn't use it much, just a curio.
    I was going to build a NAS box out of another old piece of hardware I had about, but then did all the numbers(including power usage) and it just made more sense to buy a small NAS box which also served well under the TV as our media centre.

    I have tried Ubuntu a long time ago .. maybe one day will do it again.
    But I can't recall ever having issues installing anything with any of them.

    Yesterday tho, it did take me a good 5 or so hours trying to get LineageOS installed on an old SGS5 with the Google apps compatibility.
    So yeah, if they can make one for all 'app store' type repository for software, I'd reckon more folks would give it a go.


    Quote Originally Posted by Pedro_The_Swift View Post
    SSD's,, still the biggest boost in computer speed ever.
    all the new nvme's and fast ram in the world wont make the impact a simple hdd to ssd swap will.

    and its a dead simple drop in thing.
    Yes and no. Not always, but usually. And if it's a drop in update, then more than likely the fresh install of Windows will have made as much difference in speed.
    Some computers can be made or come with decently fast HDDs, it just depends on which/what it is.

    nvme will make the bigger difference over an SSD compared to a HDD tho. minimum 2-3x faster, and it depends on what exactly you're doing on the computer.

    My PC is primarily for editing large RAW files off cameras, and with the raw images loaded on the nvme, the difference in editing speed is more marked than if I store them on the plain jane 2.5" SSD.
    SSD tops out at 500Mb/s, whereas the nvme tops out at just shy of 1500MB/s. It's all older gen hardware now tho, maybe 6 or more years.
    Son's more recent PC with it's billion MB/s nvme drive rockets by comparison to mine if I do the same photo edits on it.
    I think we recorded a 4 second Windows boot time(no log on) on his just after we finished it.
    Arthur.

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    '03 D2 Td5 Auto

  3. #33
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    going from hdd to ssd is the best bang for buck upgrade you can make on an older pc hands down.

    its not about the throughput speed, its about the lag, which equates to responsiveness to the end user.

  4. #34
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    Quote Originally Posted by Eevo View Post
    going from hdd to ssd is the best bang for buck upgrade you can make on an older pc hands down.

    ....
    I respectfully disagree through lots of experience.
    Not sayign it's not a good bang for buck, but the problem is the buck .. you need to spend it.
    Best bang for buck is a reinstall of the OS fresh. Backup your stuff, fresh install and remove services that you don't need.
    I see so many old PC running silly services from Apple and Adobe that make their old PCs sluggish, and a refresh of the OS and removal of automatically starting services and software helps just as much .. but there's no 'buck' component.
    Hence better bang for buck.

    Of course adding a new storage device like an SSD at the same time will improve the bang component.
    And like I explained in my previous post, it really depends on what you're using the old PC for too.
    If you're doing very arduous media encoding, just the SSD doesn't help all that much, as encoding requires heavy CPU utilisation more than storage speed. Depending on the software used, it may also benefit from an updated graphics device .. etc.

    As an example of the above:
    I have Nikon cameras, so edit 90Mb Nikon raw files. These translate into 200Mb+ tiff files. Those tiff files are stored in a cache area.
    With the old HDDs Nikon's Capture NX2 software was quite slow at some things(as it's dealing with 200Mb tif files. Many people that used CNX2 complained about it's slow speed for editing.
    I bought a couple of Samsung HDDs, they were very well rated at the time(this is more than 10 years ago).
    Used the Samsung HDD as the cache area only so that the files were on a slower drive, but the software placed the temporary tif files on the new much faster Samsung drive now.
    The old cache HDD was half the speed(about 50-60MB/s vs 100ish+ for the Samsung now.
    Editing steps became instant, except for one edit step which was noise reduction. All other edits relied on storage speed, NR was pure CPU dependent.
    So with the slower drives, you'd make an edit like brighten or darken or whatever it'd take a sec or two to process and display the new edit step. With the Samsung HDD it was noticable in that the image would update, but tenths of a second type noticable.
    But even with the faster storage now, if I used NR, there was no change(maybe a sec or so quicker) with the application of NR. Sometimes 30sec, sometimes 1 min.

    This is why I say it depends on what you're doing with the PC. if you want the old PC to do CPU intensive applications, updating the SSD won't help, the CPU is still the same old one.
    If you want it to boot up quicker, best bet is to fresh install, and minimise start up services and software.
    If you want faster browse speed, either change your browser or, if you have them, stop some of the addons.

    My slowest device at the moment is an old Gigabyte S1080 (Windows)tablet. Nice idea, would like one again but minimal need for it. It's battery is dead.
    It's glacier during an iceage type sluggish.
    It had a woeful HDD, which I updated to a better HDD. improvement(from 4500RPM to 7200RPM) for sure. Then I got an SSD, and that improved it's start up yet again. But those improvements were incremental. Say from 1min to 45 sec to 30 sec or whatever.
    Never a lighting speed boost. It uses an Atom CPU, so it's just a slug. It was handy to adjust the LPG system in an old car I had back then, and some other stuff like run Ozi desktop in the car, and do some image sorting when out on the road and it had sim, so I also got a data sim for it.
    So it was connectable too, and could be used as a phone if needed. Handy little thing back then.
    This is more than 10 years ago.
    The best upgrade I did for it tho was to update to Win10 when it came out and was a free upgrade from Win7. Cut boot times like crazy compared to even the SSD upgrade.

    For an old laptop, for sure an SSD upgrade is really the only option you can choose. Can't change any other hardware (easily).
    Arthur.

    '99 D1 300Tdi Auto
    '03 D2 Td5 Auto

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