Foxhound5366
Honorary Master
So if like me you consider yourself only semi-literate with computer hardware and were hesitant about upgrading your laptop yourself, I bring good news: any fool can do it 
I know this because I've just done it. I've breathed vast amounts of new life into my humble Toshiba Satellite C50 laptop (a powerhouse it ain't) for the princely sum of R2 297 and only three components required (I already had screwdrivers lol):
- 1x Samsung 850 Evo 250GB SSD (R1 599)
- 1x stick of Crucial 4GB 1600MHz DDR3 RAM (R489)
- 1x Transcend Storejet 2.5'' USB 3.0 Sata Enclosure (R209)
Everybody always speaks about the speed of SSD-powered computers - and you can even watch a pretty compelling side-by-side video here - but you don't really appreciate it until it's powering your own laptop. Adobe CS programs fully opening in only six seconds, what joy!
The only pain point was transferring all my media files onto a 2TB external drive, but in the end I whittled everything on my laptop down to only 160GB. The RAM upgrade was desperately needed too: that extra 4GB doubled my RAM up to 8GB in total, and now my system is isn't consistently idling at 70% of its available RAM like it used to (looking at you Microsoft, Chrome and Bitdefender!).
In case you're new to this like I was, you need the external HD enclosure to hold your SSD while you're using Samsung's simple-to-use data migration tool to clone your old drive (that took three hours for my 160GB fyi). The best part is, the actual installation should be easier for you than mine was: Toshiba is needlessly cruel so I had to unscrew the entire back end of my laptop just to get at the bits I needed (other laptops have handy little individual access ports for each component).
Bottom line: it's simple, it's relatively cheap and if you apply just a *little* care you've got nothing to worry about. There are YouTube videos galore for every laptop model you want, so just google "[your laptop model] + upgrade SSD and RAM + Youtube". Good luck to anybody who still has to do this, I say go for it
I know this because I've just done it. I've breathed vast amounts of new life into my humble Toshiba Satellite C50 laptop (a powerhouse it ain't) for the princely sum of R2 297 and only three components required (I already had screwdrivers lol):
- 1x Samsung 850 Evo 250GB SSD (R1 599)
- 1x stick of Crucial 4GB 1600MHz DDR3 RAM (R489)
- 1x Transcend Storejet 2.5'' USB 3.0 Sata Enclosure (R209)
Everybody always speaks about the speed of SSD-powered computers - and you can even watch a pretty compelling side-by-side video here - but you don't really appreciate it until it's powering your own laptop. Adobe CS programs fully opening in only six seconds, what joy!
The only pain point was transferring all my media files onto a 2TB external drive, but in the end I whittled everything on my laptop down to only 160GB. The RAM upgrade was desperately needed too: that extra 4GB doubled my RAM up to 8GB in total, and now my system is isn't consistently idling at 70% of its available RAM like it used to (looking at you Microsoft, Chrome and Bitdefender!).
In case you're new to this like I was, you need the external HD enclosure to hold your SSD while you're using Samsung's simple-to-use data migration tool to clone your old drive (that took three hours for my 160GB fyi). The best part is, the actual installation should be easier for you than mine was: Toshiba is needlessly cruel so I had to unscrew the entire back end of my laptop just to get at the bits I needed (other laptops have handy little individual access ports for each component).
Bottom line: it's simple, it's relatively cheap and if you apply just a *little* care you've got nothing to worry about. There are YouTube videos galore for every laptop model you want, so just google "[your laptop model] + upgrade SSD and RAM + Youtube". Good luck to anybody who still has to do this, I say go for it