[dba-Tech] New machine migrate to SSD

[John Colby]

My laptop died the saltwater death.  :(

The Samsung 840 EVO 500K SSD however survived.  :)

I decided that I need a CHEAP machine to leave on the boat, so I just 
purchased a low end ASUS laptop, open box from Egghead.  Dual core i5 
2.2 ghz with 8 gigs RAM, no touch (yep, still exists) but with a 500g 5K 
RPM drive.  The drive is killing the performance.

It had Windows 8.1 on it.  I cannot express how badly Windows 8.x 
sucks.  With no touch... whooo doggy dies it suck even worse.  Try 
operating Windows 8.x with a touch pad.  Woof, what a dog!  :)  I dug 
out a mouse, then allowed it to install the 168 updates, THEN it decided 
to allow upgrade to Windows 10.

I am actually quite impressed with the Windows 10 upgrade experience, at 
least from a new Windows 8.1 install.  I started it running, came back 
many hours later and it was logged back in to my Windows 10 install.

Windows 10 with classic Shell is quite usable.  Once I got rid of the 
desktop and all of it's constantly flashing crap, and of course turned 
off all the spy crap / advertisement servicing, it is back to being an 
OS which runs my programs.  I have been using that on my Dell All-In-One 
desktop for about a month now, and if it weren't for the horrid "modern" 
look (and upgrades I can't control) I wouldn't really know it wasn't 
Windows 7.

So back to my low end laptop.   I am in the process of copying all of 
the good (user data) stuff off of the salvaged Samsung SSD onto backup, 
and will format and system prep / migrate my Windows 10 install onto my 
Samsung SSD.  Unfortunately the laptop has to be disassembled (really 
just opened) to replace the drive.  It looks like just 8 screws.  Since 
an Open Box has no warranty anyway... But hey it was cheap at about $400 
shipped.

I hope to have the SSD in it by the end of today, which should allow it 
to be a reasonably fast little machine.

-- 
John W. Colby