The first time I tried to make an old laptop work like new again

Growing up I didn't have my own computer, it was always shared and it was placed in a space where my siblings and I would take turns using it for whatever reason. So you can imagine how nasty and crunchy the keyboard and mouse were when placed in the hands of 3 kids with so many greasy keys. It wasn't until I reached high school that I got my own personal computer. A laptop. A hand that my mother no longer used. It wasn't the best, but I used it, and I used it until it died. I'm serious. Like, this thing wouldn't charge, the chassis was falling apart, and the trackpad was all scratched up. Bad memories. But used computers can be very useful, especially if the previous owner took good care of them. It can also be much cheaper to renew an old machine than to buy a new one.

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This is an ASUS laptop that my girlfriend's older brother no longer uses. I asked him if I could give this to my younger brother who needed a computer for school. So shout to him quickly. Thanks Tyler. And before I hand this over to my brother, I want to show you how a quick wipe and hard drive swap can really make a laptop feel like new. So, let's get started.

Let's first discuss what makes this thing move to understand what needs to be done to get it into shape. It's a 15-inch laptop with an Intel i7 4500U which does quite well in the benchmarks and which is really very pleasant to use, then there is the Intel HD 4400 graphics card, 8 GB of RAM, a 1TB hard drive and the laptop has a battery life of around 3 hours probably because the battery is old and a 1366 by 768 which is definitely not the best but will do the job. The machine itself shows some cosmetic wear, but other than that the laptop is in excellent condition with no major issues. So from here, there are a few things I want to fix on this thing to make it feel like new or at least newer.

First, the internal hard drive has to go. This thing is slow, it takes over a minute to start the machine and to be honest, who has time to wait more than a minute? I prefer to wait 2 minutes for a hot pocket. So we'll pop in this cheap 25,240GB SSD from Micro Center. Secondly, there are stickers, sticky mark on the machine and dirt that I want to clean to give the laptop a better overall appearance. So sticker removal and light cleaning is definitely going to happen, now let's get started.

We want to replace the hard drive, but since it had data belonging to my girlfriend's brother, I didn't want to erase it or clone it to the new SSD. So I loaded an installation of Windows 10 onto a flash drive. Replacing the hard drive was easy, just removed the screws on the back of the machine and the hard drive was now clearly exposed. Many laptops will also be easy to upgrade, unless you have certain machines like a Surface or MacBook. Sorry guys. Anyway, just another screw removed and the hard drive slides out easily. We must then unscrew the old hard drive from its tray, and replace it with our SSD. Then plug the SSD back in, place it in the back of the laptop and wa-la. A masterpiece. From there, I tried to install Windows via the flash drive I created several times, but everything failed, because I was stupid. If you are installing Windows, it is better to use a USB 2.0 port rather than USB 3.0. For this laptop, version 3.0 did not work at all during installation. After going through all these issues it booted up just fine on Windows 10, then I spent about an hour downloading the updates and drivers and the laptop works great. It boots up much faster than before and everything is super fast. I think it was definitely worth it.

But how does this old machine compare to a brand new machine. GOOD. This machine has similar specs and performance to laptops you'd find new for around $300-$400. But some of these laptops don't include an SSD or an SSD of this size. All we really did was spend 25 to upgrade the SSD, clean the OS of any bloatware, and clean the machine to make it overall better. I am sure my brother will now benefit greatly from this machine. And I hope this will make some people take another look at used electronics rather than just buying something new every time.

Anyway, what do you think?

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