What/how to upgrade this computer...

I have a kind of spare Dell Latitude D620, T2300/1.66 Ghz/2Core, 2GB RAM, a 60 GB hard drive:
It is moderately laggy and therefore moderately annoying. Once I start playback it seems OK, but the cursor lags and then I mis-select and aggravation sets in. I'm looking for opinions for the most worthy upgrade. IIt's very possible it is laggy due to a runaway process, like dwm, but that's another story. I'm still maybe interested in upgrading). the RAM after boot says 1.24 GB available, but after running some stuff and quitting it said like 10 MB only (!). I ran a Crucial scan, that says:
- Add 1 GB (swap 1-->2 for a total of 3) for $28
- Change to 120GB SSD for $28. This would probably necessitate loading a new Windows version clean, since I have no idea where then Win7 install discs have got to. Under an enterprise license I can download the new Windows for $10, also Office for $10. Right now I don't need more hard drive space, basically stream from this machine, but a new Win and Office probably would need more space (??). And, can Win10 even run well on this old CPU?

 

You need more RAM for your machine. Depending upon how handy you are you may be able to do this yourself. Google 'dell latitude d620 upgrade ram' and you'll see a few videos that outline the process.

 

SSD will give you the most dramatic improvement, as your pc is probably already using memory swap with the super slow hard drive when it runs out of physical memory. However, I'd do both and I'd get two sticks of 2GB, not one. I've always considered an SSD to be the most felt upgrade for the user experience. People discount it, but the first time I installed an SSD on an ancient laptop and watched it boot and open programs in an instant, I was sold.

 

You need to consider a newer PC, it's now a 64 Bit world, and you need something which can accept 4GB of RAM, 8GB or more better, and faster SATA storage to run modern OS'es better. Core i3 or i5 a good happy medium. And there's nice Dell Latitudes with faster Core i CPU, which can accept 8GB of RAM and nice SATA storage for say, around $50 on eBay, with DVD-RW burners, buy a new hard drive, a new hard drive caddy and you could have a very nice laptop for $130 or less. Which will run Windows 10 well or run a Linux distro if you want that.

 

This is my bad. I didn't look up the pc. Yup, 32 bit can only do 3gb! Time for a new PC.

 

assuming your computer can take 4 gigs, I'd to that too.

when you get the new solid state drive, just clone the old drive to it, then either store it for emergency use, or wipe it and use it as an additional storage drive.

 

Windows Disk Cleanup - run a couple of times. doesn't always complete job first time.
CCleaner Professional | Try the world’s most trusted PC cleaner, free! - free version - registry cleaner
I've just installed Registry Defrag, a great tool to make your PC run fast and smooth - free registry defrag

there are more things you can do to clean up your computer if you know what you are doing but these are safe for everyone

 

Good advice. However, I'm a little wary of things that mess with the registry. CC Cleaner is solid though. I also suggest uninstalling any programs not in use anymore as that usually can save some RAM if they're things that open on startup unknowingly. Most people have like 5000 things in their system tray and only know what three of them do, lol.

 

On that machine, max out the ram with 4gb. Even with 32 bit it will use about 3.5gb of ram, not merely 3.
Use Revo Uninstaller Free to remove any programs you don't use. It gets rid of hidden traces that Windows Uninstall deliberately misses.
If using CCleaner, be sure to uncheck the History for any browser you use, if you want to save the history of pages you visit (I do).
Win 10 will run OK enough if not "well" on that. You can put Win 10 64 on it and you may be able to max the ram to 8gb. 10-64 will upgrade a Win 7 machine keeping most everything in place, but it may break a few programs, but probably not, and any that break were poorly written programs anyway.
After anything above, you can upgrade to an SSD and those all come with or have a manufacturer's download of a disk cloning program. For that you need a USB cable to connect the second drive.
4 or 8 GB ram, Win 10 64, and SSD, will give that machine a nice new kick.

The only odd thing is that model machine is old enough that Win 10 may not come with an appropriate display driver. When you install 10, it could default to a blurry looking stretched 640 x 480 screen. Dell has released specific drivers for the D620 running Windows 10. You have to install 10 first then blurrily install the new driver for 10 to get a sharp highest possible rez screen. Not a problem, just an extra step.

This link to a forum message claims to have the correct new driver - right click and download the file from that forum msg (I did download the file, it seems ok). Then in your blurry new 10 screen, right click the file and choose Install. I cannot check this without a D620 but I have run into similar situations.
Solved - windows 10 driver for Dell Latitude D620 - Dell Community

By now 10 may include a correct driver, or it still might not.

 

I'm curious whether the OP has the T2400 or T7100 processor. Former is 32 bit and latter is 64 bit. I'm getting mixed info from Google on this.

@head_unit - can you open the properties screen in Windows where it tells you about what's installed on the PC? If it's the 64 bit version, it might be worth the upgrade. If it's 32 bit, I'd scrap it and buy something else.

 

Good God Sometimes I skip over stuff in the first sentence for no apparent reason. T2300 it is! That's 32 bit.

 

there are many other clean-up programs.
many are not safe and delete things you don't want deleted.
my recommendations are safe and I recommended them for people with little or no computer expertise.

also, defragging after clean-up might help.

 

Good catch, I didn't even think of that. There's not a possibility of a bad technical mistake, Win 10-64 will show an error msg and refuse to install if it encounters a 32 bit only processor, so you just use Win 10-32.
The same display driver situation applies.

 

that's why I only recommended registry
trying to be completely safe

 

Never. Do you know what it does?

 

yes

for HDD not SSD

What about SSDs—do they benefit from defragmentation? The simple answer is no. The entire basis of fragmented data relies on the fact that your storage device uses moving parts to access data. Since SSDs have no moving parts, hence “Solid State”, there's no seek time or rotational latency. Instead, SSDs access flash memory (NAND) at much higher speeds, typically less than 50us—that's 50 microseconds, or compared to a typical hard drive with a 15ms average access time, about 300 times faster. But there's more to the story than just speed.

SSDs don't just eliminate moving parts and improve access times, they also have built-in wear-leveling algorithms. The reason is that the NAND gates wear out over time, and are rated in program/erase cycles. Each cell in a modern SSD can be written between 1,000-3,000 times before the cell stops working properly. To avoid individual cells that contain frequently changed data from wearing out faster, SSDs track usage of each block, and the wear-leveling algorithms ensure that over time, the cells on an SSD are written a similar number of times. There are also extra blocks that aren't user accessible (called spare area) that the algorithms can use to keep the drives from wearing out.

Because of the way SSDs work, not only does data not become fragmented, but running a defragmentation utility will actually burn through the program/erase cycles and potentially cause premature 'death' of your SSDs. It's not something that would happen quickly—a 500GB Samsung 850 Evo as an example is rated for 150TB of total writes, or the equivalent of writing to every block of the drive at least 300 times. With typical users writing less than 20GB per day on average, it would require more than 20 years to burn through 150TB of writes. But defragmenting could easily write hundreds of GB of data, which would wear out an SSD much faster.

The good news is that any defragmentation program worth using should also detect the presence of an SSD and warn you not to defrag it. So save your time and do something more useful like playing games instead of defragging.

 

You realize Windows Vista and newer Defrag automatically, right? I'm sure Microsoft did that because it's bad This also means there's probably no reason for the OP to do so, since he's running Win7.

 

But Win 7, 8, and 10 are smart enough to recognize an SSD and not defrag it automatically. Not sure, and don't care, about Vista.

I just found this:
The real and complete story - Does Windows defragment your SSD? - Scott Hanselman

So apparently 7, 8, and 10 DO, by default, do a minimal and useful amount of defrag to an SSD, once a month.

But we're nowhere near this point from the OP's original questions.

 

That laptop is an antique. You may be able to swap the HDD for an SDD but I'm not sure it is possible if you kept the original XP operating system and I'm not sure if W10 can install on this machine. The basic requirements seems to indicate it will but the only versions supporting a direct upgrade are W7 and above.

 

Windows 10 32 bit can be installed, and would be more efficient on such limited specifications than the 64 bit version.

64 bit Windows 10 requires at least a Core 2 Duo based machine due to particular required CPU instructions. It can't run on 64 bit Pentium 4 or most "core 1" CPUs.

The SSD would be a reasonable upgrade, as it could be used in future computers, while a memory or CPU upgrade is a dead end on this obsolete laptop.

A faster Core 2 duo or quad laptop that was originally top-tier, like a Dell Precision M4400, can be rescued from the recycler for cheap and is still a productive machine.

 

Here's the thing that laptop is over 10 years old came out before the iPhone( just for perspective in the advancement of Technology). My personal opinion is the money and frankly time that you will spend trying to upgrade this computer it's not worth it. As people have been saying yes there are things you can do to upgrade but due to the age of the computer that is somewhat Limited. Even fully loaded it's still not a very good computer in this day in age.

 

SSD wouldn't be a waste though, since it can be moved to whatever PC the OP moves on to after this. Whether it's worth the effort to fight getting Windows 10 installed is another story, lol. But in my opinion, purchasing an SSD is never a bad investment. Even if it's not needed as a boot drive later on, it can always be put in an external case and be used as a rock solid backup drive.

 

Basically the machine is used for:
- Light browsing
- Showing a movie to a projector
- Maybe a PowerPoint sometimes
Not 56 things at once. But after I did a few things, yes, it seemed memory was tight. If I was using this machine all the time I would get a new machine, but as a once-in-a while backup (i.e. I play a movie on that one while I do other stuff on my main machine) it is handy and paid for.
This is spending personal money on something for work, for my own convenience, so cheap is the order of the day.

 

You apparently don't actually know what defragging a hard drive actually does and why it is illogical and inaccurate to state that it would help with "cleaning up" a laptop.

Where are you getting this from? I swear, the stuff people post sometimes...

 

I've got a huge bag of old laptop ram, if you're interested, I could mail them to you first class mail. Probably wouldn't cost more than a couple bucks shipping and I don't want any money for the RAM. You have PayPal? Then you'd only need to purchase the SSD.