Windows 7 Upgrades
Fresh Life to Even Old Devices
Three weeks ago before the Yeppoon bushfires and the resulting devastation we wrote about the demise of support for the Windows 7 operating system. The January 14 deadline is fast approaching whereby Windows 7 based computers will become less and less secure from hackers and web borne viruses.
In the last 3 weeks we have already replaced or upgraded dozens of laptops & desktops that were previously running Windows 7 and we’re getting more enquiry about the options here each week. In my original article I suggested that I would investigate the upgrade options more closely the following week – until someone lit a match and mayhem prevailed. So this week we pick up where I left off.
If your Windows 7 Desktop or Laptop was not a budget purchase then it could well have decent life left in it. For a device to fit into this category it needs to be free of screen cracks, failing hinges and missing keys – if it is a laptop, and free from failing to start or shutting down unexpectantly no matter what sort of device.
Apart from the above, to qualify for upgrading potential it needs to have a decent Central Processing Unit (CPU) to run Windows 10 effectively – with a benchmark rating of at least 2,000. I have talked about CPU models and power ratings in previous Byte Me articles and you can look up the power rating for your CPU at www.cpubenchmark.net to see if it meets this power level.
If you are struggling to work out how your particular laptop or desktop would go with Windows 10 then call in and see us as it will only take a few minutes to determine. If the above criteria are satisfied then where to next? A proper upgrade to Windows 10 is best performed with a fresh install onto a newly formatted hard drive, however any hard drive from a Windows 7 device will have already logged many thousands of hours of operation and should be considered worn out.
Coincidently there has been no better time to upgrade from your old mechanical hard disk drive (HDD) to a solid-state drive (SSD) than right now, so this upgrade should be done at the same time as going to Windows 10. Every Windows 7 to Windows 10 upgrade we have done in the last 6 months has included this upgrade to an SSD.
We exclusively use the Samsung brand SSD’s which have 5-year warranty, are around 5-10 times quicker than a HDD and are around 10 times more reliable than a HDD. Because SSD’s are so much faster we often find that customers get this upgrade for free because of the huge reduction in our time and hence our labour charges.
So what happens if you spend around $300 or more on an old device that might die just a month down the track? Several customers have already raised this concern. The good news is that the money that you have invested into an SSD and a fresh install of Windows 10 and software and data setup is not wasted!
We can take an SSD with Windows 10 out of a failed old laptop or desktop and place it into a new device to have everything running again in less than an hour. So not only is there far reduced labour in this operation but we can also discount the new device by the same amount as the SSD purchase!
Future Byte Me topics can be emailed to [email protected] and Bruce is contactable at Kerr Solutions, 205 Musgrave Street or on 07 49 222 400.
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