Well...
Basically all my wife needs to do is have MS Word running, maybe Irfanview, and several browsing windows (not more than 1 running vids at a time.)
And not have the machine take a full minute to open another browser window... Or take 5 minutes to boot up. (That’s what’s happening on her old Dell machine despite all my efforts to clean it up. The plan is to get her going with this machine, then use Win 10’s “fresh start” function to reinstall itself minus any gunk, in the Dell, stick a SSD in it (it is already maxed out at 4 GB RAM), and see if it’s good enough for my daughter to do homework and such on. If not, we might try Linux in the Dell for kicks.
The ACER is in fact brand new (but slightly “old stock”, as I’d stashed it until I could get around to working with it. The intention was always to at least add a SSD & likely some RAM.) I’m typing on it right now, so, as a test, ATTM I have 9 browser windows open, 2 playing vids, and a WordPad window going, plus the machine is downloading Windows updates. The last You Tube vid window took ~2 seconds to open. This is without the SSD in yet, and running 4 GB of RAM.
I conclude the CPU is not complete junk (gamers would surely disagree) and with a SSD and 4 GB of RAM most people noted some improvement — so I think we can get what we need with the mods discussed. I figured I didn’t want to spend over $100 on mods (the machine only cost me $65 on clearance!) The RAM if I only add another 4 GB only cost me $23 and the SSD was $29 (Black Friday). If I stick in a full 16 GB of RAM it’d be $45 for that, IIRC. (I’m losing track of my Black Friday deals without looking at receipts.) (I’ve for now stuck the 16 GB in my HP laptop, which frees up 2x 4 GB sticks from the HP.) I just need to know how best to get the DVD player / writer in this Acer going nicely after that 2nd SATA connection is tied up with a HD.
And, it’d be useful to know if RAM over 8 GB would likely improve the life of the SSD.
Maybe someone knows...
At this point I have 2x of 4 GB of laptop RAM and 3 SSD’s looking for a home.
Not that I disagree with you about eBay. I have 3 HP business desktops with i3 or i5 processors in them, all upgraded with SSD’s, and my HP8460 laptop now has the 16 GB of RAM and a SSD. All were eBay purchases.
One thing to find out is how much memory your MB can recognize. I had 4gb in it but it could only use 3gigs no matter how much you put in. That’s the Bios limit on some older machines. If it will see 8gb, that’s all good. Add on boards can get you where you want to go. You can even put a Hard drive card in to get your DVD in. How many slots do you have left and are they all PCIe? another thing to look at is how fast is your network running? I went from 10mbs to 300 mbs and my network card ran about 50mbs until I put the new machine on the network. Then it ran 250mbs. That will load things much faster even with slower machine. You need a gigabit card for that.