Upgrading ASUS K52F to SSD

I’ve had this old (in computer terms) ASUS K52F laptop since 2009 and although it came with Windows 7 originally, I’ve mostly been dual-booting Ubuntu for the last several years.  Windows would typically take 5-10 minutes to boot and then log in and be ready to use.  Ubuntu was faster, but would still need at least three minutes to be usable.

On top of that, the battery has long since run out of juice in ten minutes.  So I have a slow, old, and (essentially) a desktop that I rarely used except to play DVDs or when I needed Windows.

The solution: replacing the 5400rpm hard drive with a Samsung 850 EVO 500GB SSD for $167.04 and a new aftermarket laptop battery for $15.74.

Before I actually did the swap, I switched Ubuntu from Unity to Xfce.  This did give me a small speed increase when starting up and logging in but I thought I could do more!

 

Leave a Reply