Older laptop - Few questions

[Margott247]

Greetings! I have an Acer Aspire 5542 thats rocking an AMD Turion™II X2 M500 with 4GB of DDR2, ATI Radeon™HD 4200 Graphics and 500gb HDD. 

 

I use the laptop for office apps, Dirigo, Visual studio, EWB 512, not much web browsing and some light gaming.

 

I need help with a few things, any help is appreciated.

 

> I am using Tiny7 as the 32bit os for this 64bit cpu which only takes 530mb of memory on startup and when idle uses 0% of my cpu power. (That is with the radeon software only open). Windows only accepts 2.8GB of ram out of those 4 due to being 32 bit. 

 

My question:

Is it worth sacrificing 64bit for a far more lightweight version of the OS (with all the features needed) that is only 32 bit and therefore the laptop has only 3GB of ram?

 

If it is not, is there any 64bit alternative to Tiny7?

 

The pc only has one drive slot and that is taken by my 500gb hdd. Should I replace it with 240gb ssd or does it not really matter?

- If it is worth for me to use Tiny7, then this question doesn't matter as the system boots up like if it was running on an ssd.

 

The pc has a CD/DVD drive, but it doesnt read, although it does spin. Could I fix this somehow? And if so, could it be without opening up the laptop too? This is not important.

 

Please do not recommend me any Linux distributions, I do not use these not because they are difficult to learn (I don't find them difficult) but because of the compatibility with some of the apps thatI use to program PLCs, which im not sure if would work either (I know there are compatibility layers - apps to run exe on linux, but I'd rather stay with windows.)

 

Thanks for any help

 

David

 

[Radium_Angel]

6 minutes ago, Diverticz said:

Thanks for any help

You can roll your own Win7 distribution in 64bit, but your standard license will not work on it.

If you are interested I will post the links.

If you are satisfied with the boot time/load times of the HDD, then stay with it, the laptop really isn't worth dumping any money into it, so an SSD, while a big improvement in things, is a waste of money, unless you love the system, in which case go for it, the change is noticeable.

 

CD-rom can be replaced, virtually impossible to fix unless you are an electronics guy with a lot of gear.

 

Other option: buy a cheap used hard drive, swap it out, install 64bit win7 and see if you get better bang for the buck. If not, put your old one back in.

[ahuckphin]

AMD Turion™II X2  are dammn beasts. These rocks. Even 11 years on, they perform better than 2014 Intel Atom's and can run full 64 bit Windows 8.1 no problem. Just need to disable some animations. An SSD would be better but a bit unnecessary. Best bit, Windows 8.1 is free from microsoft.com and can be installed with a bootable USB. No disc required. 

[TechyBen]

How is Windows 8.1 free? Still needs a key, no?

[Margott247]

9 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

You can roll your own Win7 distribution in 64bit, but your standard license will not work on it.

If you are interested I will post the links.

If you are satisfied with the boot time/load times of the HDD, then stay with it, the laptop really isn't worth dumping any money into it, so an SSD, while a big improvement in things, is a waste of money, unless you love the system, in which case go for it, the change is noticeable.

 

CD-rom can be replaced, virtually impossible to fix unless you are an electronics guy with a lot of gear.

 

Other option: buy a cheap used hard drive, swap it out, install 64bit win7 and see if you get better bang for the buck. If not, put your old one back in.

Thanks for the tips! Ill try a hard drive from my other laptop which i dont use to check 64 bit. Also sorry but what do you mean I can roll my own distributions of the os?

 

Also I guess ill skip on the drive

[Margott247]

9 minutes ago, bindydad123 said:

AMD Turion™II X2  are dammn beasts. These rocks. Even 11 years on, they perform better than 2014 Intel Atom's and can run full 64 bit Windows 8.1 no problem. Just need to disable some animations. An SSD would be better but a bit unnecessary. Best bit, Windows 8.1 is free from microsoft.com and can be installed with a bootable USB. No disc required. 

Even with classicstart on w8 or just using 8.1 I cant make myself use the os, and I had a problem with installing other os's after having win8 too so i will rather skip it but thank you for that

Also thanks, i wont get the ssd then

[Radium_Angel]

1 hour ago, Diverticz said:

Also sorry but what do you mean I can roll my own distributions of the os?

There exists a thing called "Windows 7 embedded standard" (or windows 7 standard embedded)  and you can download the ISO, mount it, and when you go to install it, it'll ask you what parts of the OS you wish to install, or skip. The end result is a super slim ultra lightweight version of Win7....

Here is the link to it if you are brave enough to try: 

 

NOTE, REQUIRES A SPECIAL KEY TO ACTIVATE, NORMAL WIN 7 KEYS WON'T WORK

 

http://www.nomaher.com/forum/index.php?topic=978.0

 

Part 7 of the download is on page 2 of that post.

It's an "interesting" exercise in what you can, and cannot, include in the OS.

[ahuckphin]

9 hours ago, TechyBen said:

How is Windows 8.1 free? Still needs a key, no?

Like 10, 8.1 doesn't need a key. Just need to modify bootable USB. Only limitations are lack of personalisation, water mark and a 'pop up' after logging in.