Advice on an old laptop

[MaroonHatHacker]

Hi all!

 

Quickly want to set the stage. I've been using a 15.6" HP ProBook 650 G1 for the last year as my main laptop. Here are the specs for context:

 

CPU: i5-4210M

GPU: Intel HD 4600

RAM 16GB DDR3 1600MHz

240GB SSD

 

I currently use it for just taking notes in lessons, programming, did do some streaming on twitch (for clarification, I wasn't streaming games), and web browsing.

I currently have an Arch Linux setup as I generally prefer linux for the kind of things I do.

 

I've looked into more upgrades for my laptop. There's a few I've considered.

 

Display: I could upgrade to a 1080p panel from the 1366x768 resolution panel currently being used. Costs around £40

CPU: The CPU is in fact socketed, so I could install up to an i7-4712MQ (tiny bump in single core performance, but double the cores and threads, so bigger multi-core performance jump), around about £60

Battery: Getting any battery health from the system is a pain, and windows and linux seem to think the battery is pretty healthy, but I've not replaced it, so afaik it's a 10 year old battery, around about £30

 

I'll probably be wanting to use this in uni too, although I'll hopefully be getting a brand new M2 macbook air as part of my course, which will probably take on a lot of the work of my current laptop.

 

What do people think, are any of these worth paying for, or should I just stick to how it is, or maybe even shell out for a newer machine?

 

Thanks,

[jaslion]

Nah you can literally get a dell latitude hp probook,.. for 100 pounds with the better specs you want without having to do all the work.

 

I'd say for such an old laptop just leave it and save a bit of money for something better. 300 pounds gets you a NICE used laptop for example that is MANY times faster than this one.

[Crunchy Dragon]

The only thing I would consider worth doing to it while this is your main laptop is replacing the battery.

 

After you have another, better laptop, then you can mess around with this one to your heart's content.

[8tg]

Wouldn’t be economical to do hardware upgrades like that unless the parts were excessively cheap. Doing it just for fun is a different story.

[MaroonHatHacker]

1 hour ago, 8tg said:

Wouldn’t be economical to do hardware upgrades like that unless the parts were excessively cheap. Doing it just for fun is a different story.

Yeah, unfortunately that's what prevents me from completely ruling out the option, the pure fun of it.

[MaroonHatHacker]

1 hour ago, jaslion said:

Nah you can literally get a dell latitude hp probook,.. for 100 pounds with the better specs you want without having to do all the work.

 

I'd say for such an old laptop just leave it and save a bit of money for something better. 300 pounds gets you a NICE used laptop for example that is MANY times faster than this one.

Yeah, £300 can get you a decent used machine, I might do that tbf

[MaroonHatHacker]

1 hour ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

The only thing I would consider worth doing to it while this is your main laptop is replacing the battery.

 

After you have another, better laptop, then you can mess around with this one to your heart's content.

Yeah, I'd say battery is the biggest sore spot, with the display being a close second

[jaslion]

17 minutes ago, MaroonHatHacker said:

Yeah, £300 can get you a decent used machine, I might do that tbf

Yeah even ryzen 5000 stuff can be had for that price already. Seen some great stuff.

 

Like we have these at work and these are NICE https://www.ebay.com/itm/126270124900?itmmeta=01HRZKBPH4QTB7ZVP7DSDXS4JX&hash=item1d66493364:g:to8AAOSwPydlAJ3H&itmprp=enc%3AAQAJAAAA4CfY4pwLq0Z2saSySkTgx4mYIbnFNPDDWNpeksogRqmV6Sxd49ST3myWg%2F6uthIE7DDrYfVRcfTHUE4TVyR0uQtRgMCXPSrscaud%2F2eulQ6ieEHkGgjeDA%2BiM6dhHgAEAzW6Y6rHrq73ETSdiMgp5P9QS4Qc80FOJKaJ2nz4oc39uv4ZLFgXGVn0ayZDoyTnyJ1UiS90nX5I%2BzcvKDN%2FMUL8qX6xd4jRNzANTB4AKNnKk3y67coHKZ03OltQxvCxGOpehUiW4sPh2XNZcdlLmeEQbj4YlwdMn7eKLeBXl51e|tkp%3ABFBM2uiu88dj

 

320$ is a steal. 6 hour battery easily

[Crunchy Dragon]

1 hour ago, MaroonHatHacker said:

Yeah, unfortunately that's what prevents me from completely ruling out the option, the pure fun of it.

Definitely do it for fun when you have a replacement laptop.

 

It's just not quite worth that kind of time and investment when it's your primary device, if that makes sense.