I’ve been in the process of reconstituting my Lenovo Ideapad after reinstalling Windows 10. Over the years since I got it, it has been progressively slowing down, even though I hadn’t been using a lot of the storage space on the drive. As it got slower, the boot times also slowed, so it took a good five minutes on average to get from power on to use it. To me, that was unacceptable, so it was high time to start over again. I only needed to back up the hard drive first, so I didn’t lose anything. Therein was my problem. I didn’t have any storage at hand that was large enough to handle the 66+ gigs of stuff that was on the laptop.
Well, that’s not entirely accurate. I have lots of spare hard drives, thumb drives, storage cards, and so on that would easily handle the problem with terabytes to spare. What I didn’t have was one of them at the ready to be able to hook up to the laptop to do the job. THAT was the problem.
Once we traded in the 2019 Murano, I had to remove all the aftermarket electronics I had added to it and install them into the new vehicle. After futzing around for the better part of 2 weeks, I finally found the 256GB memory card I’d been looking for, for months. It was nicely nestled in the dashcam I’d meant to install into the Outback. Procrastination again reared its little head, and I haven’t finished it. I popped it out into its adapter and was ready to go. Several hours later, I had the hard drive backed up and could use Windows’ own reinstall program to wipe the hard drive, and a fresh copy of the operating system was bonked into place.
Finally, the laptop booted up within a minute, and there was nothing weird on the hard drive, like when you bought a new computer. The manufacturer puts a ton of ‘bloatware’ to entice you into purchasing full versions except for the pesky version of McAfee Anti-virus that comes with Lenovo since they have a contract with them. That was pretty simple to uninstall and replace with the Anti-virus/Security suite I have used for several years. It’s reliable and not super-expensive, at least for the time being. When it becomes unaffordable, I’ll go onto something else. The good thing about the computer industry, there’s always something new coming down the pike that might be just as good as what you were using and less expensive. It’s odd that companies inevitably raise their prices when they get ‘too good.’ Yeah, it’s big business and a symptom of capitalism and the free enterprise system that we all revere and protect, but it’s also somewhat annoying at times—just my opinion.
While reloading and reconfiguring the laptop for my use, I skated over to the Lenovo website to see if there were any updates to its inner workings. Sadly, the site confirmed what I suspected; while the computer is still usable, it’s no longer being supported, so the last BIOS update was back in 2018. It’s WAY out of warranty, but some drivers might have been updated, a BIOS update; who knows? It’s even too slow in the processor to upgrade to Windows 11. And I’m not buying a new laptop to have the shiny new version of Windows. Perhaps Win 12 will be backward compatible with the old girl, Or someone in Redmond will consider older computers worthy of a Win 11 upgrade. It’s possible. Not likely, but possible.
Just for the heck of it, the last thing I did was check to see if I wanted to trade in this computer for a new one; what would Lenovo give me for it? I had to look up the processor identifier on the Intel site, as the information the computer provided me on the System page was gibberish. Once I had that information and plugged that into the evaluator, it gave me the total of what my laptop was worth to them.
Heh. $24.12. I imagine the components that make up the computer are worth more than that. For the heck of it, I went to eBay, and brand new models are selling for $550—refurbs for $200. Even parts (like the motherboard or the screen) sell for more than what Lenovo offered me. Pfft. I’m keeping it. Though it makes me wonder if I could upgrade the processor, would I be able to upgrade this to Win 11? Interesting theory. Maybe I’ll check it out someday. Either way, it works, it’s like new, so I will keep using it.