Andy: Good Morning Charlie Brown. Any updates on the 1809 Windows update?

Charlie: Microsoft has supposedly found the problem and has a fix. For people who have applied the 1809 update to their systems already MS has released a patch to incorporate these fixes. For those who have not applied thee 1809 update to their systems, MS is testing their fixes and will release the update, perhaps next month. I still like what I have seen of the 1809 update.

Andy: What else would you like to talk about today?

Charlie: We see a lot of systems and many have some characteristics that make them much slower than they should be.

Andy: What kinds of things are you seeing on these systems?
Charlie: Well to make systems look attractive to customers, whether on-line or in the stores, the manufacturers are putting very large hard disk drives in them.

Andy: I can understand that. So what’s wrong with that?

Charlie: A couple of things. First, to keep the price down they are using 5400 rpm hard drives and this slows down the system performance. They may have a fast processor and lots of RAM but this 5400 rpm drive makes the performance crawl. Second, when we look at these drives, we see that they may be a terabyte or more in size but the people are only using 100 GB or so for their files. So they are paying for the size but not using it and the drive speed is making the system performance poor.

Andy: Well what can you do to improve the system performance?

Charlie: It turns out that Solid State Drives of SSD’s are much faster than hard disk drives, especially the 5400 rpm ones. And it also turns out that there is currently a large over supply of these solid state drives available. The price for the SSD’s used to be much higher than the I strongly recommend that you hold off on applying this update this month until third drives, but with the over capacity the prices are dropping significantly. Replacing the hard disk drive in your PC can really speed up its performance.

Andy: Can you give some price examples?

Charlie: Well 256 GB SSD’s used to go for about $125 to $150. They’re now available for less than $100. And 500 GB SSD’s used to be $200 to $250. They’re now in the $125 range.

Andy: Do you have any brands that you like?

Charlie: Yes, we like Samsung and Crucial units. There are other brands out there too at different price points but we like the speed and reliability specs for drives from these two companies.

Andy: So do I just go out and get a SSD and plop it into my system?

Charlie: It’s not quite as easy as that for an end user, but for us, it’s not much harder. If your old drive is working, just slowly, we can usually clone it to a SSD. There is some work required to shrink larger drives so they fit on to the smaller SSD, but we can usually make it work. And by cloning, you don’t lose anything. Your programs and data are preserved.

If your drive is not working, we can install the OS on the solid state drive and then move your data files and directories to it.

If you are looking for a new system, look for one with a SSD.

With the prices as low as they currently are for SSD’s and the performance increase that you see from them, I have to say that this upgrade to your system is a “no-brainer”.

Andy: I have to enthusiastically agree with Charlie on this. Your system will perform like or even better than new after you install a SSD. If you want more information on a drive replacement or a new system with a SSD think of Charlie and Dave at PC Applications for help with SSD upgrades. That’s Charlie and Dave at PC Applications, 533-6510, or visit their web site pcapp.com.

Charlie: For computers of renown, just call Charlie Brown!