[Pads]

Ok so my current laptop is 3 years old and full of rubbish and a bit intermittent now(it actually switches of after playing minecraft for 30 minutes at a time!! MINECRAFT for gods sake).

So basically I was wondering if buying windows 7 32bit oem and installing that on the computer and starting a fresh is likely to get it back to like new but 3 year old hardware?

Current specs are-

Windows vista 32 bit service pack 2
ACER aspire 6920G
Intel Core 2 duo T5800 @ 2GHz
320GB HDD
3GB RAM
Geforce 9500M


p.s also battery is shot but always use it plugged in now. looks like i could get a new one for £20 too.

So basically is it worth it for about £100(£75 windows 7+£25 battery)

[Eridani]

Are you sure it's not overheating? That could be a cause of it switching off.

[Intriguing Alias]

(Original post by Pads)
Ok so my current laptop is 3 years old and full of rubbish and a bit intermittent now(it actually switches of after playing minecraft for 30 minutes at a time!! MINECRAFT for gods sake).

So basically I was wondering if buying windows 7 32bit oem and installing that on the computer and starting a fresh is likely to get it back to like new but 3 year old hardware?

Current specs are-

Windows vista 32 bit service pack 2
ACER aspire 6920G
Intel Core 2 duo T5800 @ 2GHz
320GB HDD
3GB RAM
Geforce 9500M


p.s also battery is shot but always use it plugged in now. looks like i could get a new one for £20 too.

So basically is it worth it for about £100(£75 windows 7+£25 battery)

It's worth buying some compressed air and cleaning it out a bit - sounds like it's overheating. Minecraft is a bitch to run, it runs worse than any game I've tried on my PC (including both Crysis games, Metro 2033, The Witcher 2 and I could go on...). Okay I might have like 20 mods and an HD texture pack installed but still it's ridiculous!

[Pads]

(Original post by hassi94)
It's worth buying some compressed air and cleaning it out a bit - sounds like it's overheating. Minecraft is a bitch to run, it runs worse than any game I've tried on my PC (including both Crysis games, Metro 2033, The Witcher 2 and I could go on...). Okay I might have like 20 mods and an HD texture pack installed but still it's ridiculous!

I never new you could buy cans of compressed air till now. So just unscewing the bottom panels and giving it the once over you think will help? thats good.


Also anyone else think it would be worth updating the OS to Windows 7 aswell?

[Intriguing Alias]

(Original post by Pads)
I never new you could buy cans of compressed air till now. So just unscewing the bottom panels and giving it the once over you think will help? thats good.


Also anyone else think it would be worth updating the OS to Windows 7 aswell?

It should hopefully help. If not then you're only like 2 or 3 quid down.

Windows 7 is a much better OS than vista and installing a new OS can get rid of baggage and make your PC faster so it could be worth a shot.

[AmyJ]

(Original post by Pads)
Ok so my current laptop is 3 years old and full of rubbish and a bit intermittent now(it actually switches of after playing minecraft for 30 minutes at a time!! MINECRAFT for gods sake).

So basically I was wondering if buying windows 7 32bit oem and installing that on the computer and starting a fresh is likely to get it back to like new but 3 year old hardware?

Current specs are-

Windows vista 32 bit service pack 2
ACER aspire 6920G
Intel Core 2 duo T5800 @ 2GHz
320GB HDD
3GB RAM
Geforce 9500M


p.s also battery is shot but always use it plugged in now. looks like i could get a new one for £20 too.

So basically is it worth it for about £100(£75 windows 7+£25 battery)

It might be a good idea to see if your laptop could fit in any more RAM, as that would give you a performance boost - use this tool to find out: http://www.crucial.com/UK/ - and if so, invest in a 64-bit version of Windows 7 and buy it for £43 from Software 4 Students. The 64-bit version will enable you to make full use of 4gb RAM+; the 32-bit can only utilise 3gb.

If you've got the cash, it might also be worth spending £80 or so for an SSD. Again, you can use Crucial to determine which ones are compatible - my laptop spec is almost identical to yours and I bought this baby to speed my system up and used the old one as an external drive.

[Intriguing Alias]

(Original post by AmyJ)
It might be a good idea to see if your laptop could fit in any more RAM, as that would give you a performance boost - use this tool to find out: http://www.crucial.com/UK/ - and if so, invest in a 64-bit version of Windows 7 and buy it for £43 from Software 4 Students. The 64-bit version will enable you to make full use of 4gb RAM+; the 32-bit can only utilise 3gb.

If you've got the cash, it might also be worth spending £80 or so for an SSD. Again, you can use Crucial to determine which ones are compatible - my laptop spec is almost identical to yours and I bought this baby to speed my system up and used the old one as an external drive.

Whilst I'd usually shoot down people saying more RAM, Minecraft is a hell of a RAM hog so your RAM could in fact be limiting you there, but still I can't see it making a big difference (there are bottlenecks elsewhere in your system anyway).

The SSD could be a good idea, but again whilst it may speed it up for general usage it won't make it actually run programs better (load up faster, but once it's there it's pretty much there) so you might view it as throwing good money after bad.


OP, the point I'm trying to get across is whilst it's certainly possible to make your laptop faster, it's going to be much slower than any £350 laptop you can pick up today which might be a better investment than RAM + Windows + Battery + SSD.

[Camoxide]

(Original post by Pads)
Ok so my current laptop is 3 years old and full of rubbish and a bit intermittent now(it actually switches of after playing minecraft for 30 minutes at a time!! MINECRAFT for gods sake).

So basically I was wondering if buying windows 7 32bit oem and installing that on the computer and starting a fresh is likely to get it back to like new but 3 year old hardware?

Current specs are-

Windows vista 32 bit service pack 2
ACER aspire 6920G
Intel Core 2 duo T5800 @ 2GHz
320GB HDD
3GB RAM
Geforce 9500M


p.s also battery is shot but always use it plugged in now. looks like i could get a new one for £20 too.

So basically is it worth it for about £100(£75 windows 7+£25 battery)

Minecraft is actually really demanding on the CPU which is the hottest part of your laptop (followed by the GPU).

If it's switching off then you're laptop is likely to be overheating.

[AmyJ]

(Original post by hassi94)
Whilst I'd usually shoot down people saying more RAM, Minecraft is a hell of a RAM hog so your RAM could in fact be limiting you there, but still I can't see it making a big difference (there are bottlenecks elsewhere in your system anyway).

The SSD could be a good idea, but again whilst it may speed it up for general usage it won't make it actually run programs better (load up faster, but once it's there it's pretty much there) so you might view it as throwing good money after bad.

OP, the point I'm trying to get across is whilst it's certainly possible to make your laptop faster, it's going to be much slower than any £350 laptop you can pick up today which might be a better investment than RAM + Windows + Battery + SSD.

Really it depends whether the OP wants to drop that amount of money for a new laptop when there's nothing wrong with his current one, besides being a bit slow and needing a "refresh" etc. A new version of Windows and a new battery = £68, which doesn't break the bank. I did a very similar laptop "upgrade", just to keep it going until the Haswell processors come out next summer and give me time to save the money for a desktop. Then the old laptop can be used as a backup computer or sold for parts etc...it depends on budget.

[Pads]

Thanks everyone. Great advice and will be doing the air cleaner thing first too see how that works out. just got the back off and it does seem very dirty.

I was thinking about a new laptop but if I can spend under a 100 and have it feeling a lot faster then i can easily keep using this for another year or so.