I tend to hold on to laptops a lot longer than most people because I have to install a lot of software for everything I need to do at work. Last week my IT guy put a new machine next to mine and when I saw how dim my screen was I knew it was time for a refresh.Even worse, when my last machine died I just pulled the hard drive and put it into an older spare rig that was lying around just to spare myself the days of labor to build a new machine from scratch.Even for average users, an annual reinstall of windows can speed up a machine, it’s been over 3 years since my last rebuild. Some crazy stats:

• My Windows (XP) folder was 5.8 GB, the new fresh install is 2.6 GB
• Programs Files went from 6.3 GB down to 3.0 GB
• I lost another 3 GB cleaning out the My Docs folder

But the news gets better – I’ll be doing the final tweaking this week and then the 64 GB SSD I ordered will arrive and I’ll put the fresh image on that. SSD is a Solid State Drive – instead of the normal hard disk drive with spinning platters, this “drive” is flash memory. No moving parts means a huge boost in speed and battery life, it’s silent, and runs cooler. Speed report to follow!

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