Generations Apart

My laptop is about 2 1/2 years old, and I've noticed it slowing down. It's a Windows 7 box and gets a lot of abuse, so it just needs a nice clean install.

I didn't realise just how badly it needed cleaned up until I got a new Windows 8.1 tablet with a theoretically much lower spec but which runs about 10x faster.

When I clean up a machine I usually put a new hard disk in. They are relatively cheap, vulnerable mechanically and usually the first component to fail, so if I'm investing the time to clean a machine up it's worth a new HDD.

This time I've decided to give a SSD a go. So it's out with the 750Gb Seagate Momentous 7200rpm mechanical drive - a pretty nifty drive for a mechanical mech - and in with a 750Gb Samsung Evo 840 SSD packed with flash chips and no moving parts at all.

At the same time I'm upgrading to Windows 8.1. I like it on the tablet, so I'll give it a go on the laptop too. Hopefully I won't regret it and end up having to re-install again to downgrade!

I've had the SSD in there today to do a basic install and it seems FAST! The old HDD is back in for now so I can do my blip on Lightroom - I've not migrated my catalog to the new SSD yet!