Why isn't my uncle's new computer that fast?


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My uncle had an old Dell laptop that he bought 7 years ago. These are the specs:

Windows Vista
Intel Core 2 Duo Processor
2 GB RAM
125 GB Hard Drive

The laptop has become extremely slow over the years, but my uncle just put up with it. Well, the laptop has been having overheating issues, so my uncle finally decided to buy a new one. This is the one he just bought:

http://www.costco.com/Dell-Inspiron-15-Laptop-|-Intel-Core-i5-|-Office-2013.product.100090985.html

Looking at those specs, this new laptop looks like it's significantly more powerful as it has a Core i5 processor, 6 GB of RAM and 750 GB Hard Drive. Not to mention that is has Windows 8 which is supposedly MUCH faster than Vista.

Well, to our surprise, it wasn't that much faster. It takes a long time to boot up and shut down. And it's not as responsive as he hoped. And it's not like you open a program and it instantaneously opens up. It's also sluggish like his old PC.

Why isn't this new computer any faster? Have we reached the law of diminishing returns with computers now? Or is there something wrong with the specs that my uncle is not aware of?

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I can tell you, it's 99.99999999999999999999999% due to the crapware Dell installed on the machine.

 

That Dell Inspiron 15 doesn't really have any pre-loaded crap-ware on it from the factory, I've loaded a few of those out of the box, it has the Dell Control Center, Webcam (if installed) and TPM stuff, but not much else. Sometimes Symantec or Mcafee.

 

The CPU he has in that think is quite low..  and I just confirmed the drive is 5400RPM, you could put 32GB of ram in it and a nice i7 EE and it would still run slow loading/booting because of that

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It's also sluggish like his old PC.

Why isn't this new computer any faster? Have we reached the law of diminishing returns with computers now? Or is there something wrong with the specs that my uncle is not aware of?

 

Besides opening programs/booting up, what is trying to do? Surf the net? If so, does he have DSL?

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Is there any way to check the RPM on my old computer's HD?

 

it is on the label on the hard drive inside the laptop... 

 

or you might have the label on laptop somewhere maybe near the keyboard or bottom.

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If your looking for fast boot, and loading of anything off the disk - I would suggest a SSD to be sure.  My machine boots in like 20 seconds to the desktop with the SSD.

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Start > msconfig > startup tab. review, and untick things you dont need stating up (normally all). issues should be lot better

 

Or Crtl+Shift+Esc, then startup tab

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Does anyone other than WD even produce 2.5" drives that are 7200rpms anymore? Seems to be that market died awhile ago.

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