I bought this Toshiba laptop a couple years ago for the low low of 20 bucks. It was completely unusable, but I needed super basic windows os laptop to update my ODB-2 code reader. a 5 plus hour format and OS install later on the mechanical hard drive, I was able to update the code scanner and quickly put the laptop away.
Here we are in 2022 now.. and I still have this cheap laptop with a working battery. So I decided to upgrade and see if I could make it usable.
It had the most basic specs:
Windows 8.1
AMD dual core E1-1200 @1.40 GHz
4GB ram
500GB spinning hard drive
64 Bit OS.
I have all the extra parts already so I did not buy anything, and just installed what I had into it.
Took laptop apart to firstly replace the Cpu thermal paste and clean only and only small fan. I used A/S 5 Thermal Paste. Next was to upgrade the ram It only has one slot but I had a 8GB chip that fit the bill then was a 500GB solid state drive and then finally was the installation of windows 10 home.
Current specs after upgrades:
Windows 10 Home
Still has the AMD dual core
8GB ram
500GB SSD
64 Bit oS.
two hours later from state to finish, and this laptop is very usable now for basic if light use. The duel core AMD is the bottle neck here, but as a whole it is a extremely cheap feeling laptop, the keyboard is mid blowing bad, and the screen is terrible... BUT its usable, and updated to the most recent Win 10 OS and last hours on the battery. I'm thinking this will be a garage computer or something like that..
Why I did this was "just because" - I love doing it (and I hate e waste)
Here we are in 2022 now.. and I still have this cheap laptop with a working battery. So I decided to upgrade and see if I could make it usable.
It had the most basic specs:
Windows 8.1
AMD dual core E1-1200 @1.40 GHz
4GB ram
500GB spinning hard drive
64 Bit OS.
I have all the extra parts already so I did not buy anything, and just installed what I had into it.
Took laptop apart to firstly replace the Cpu thermal paste and clean only and only small fan. I used A/S 5 Thermal Paste. Next was to upgrade the ram It only has one slot but I had a 8GB chip that fit the bill then was a 500GB solid state drive and then finally was the installation of windows 10 home.
Current specs after upgrades:
Windows 10 Home
Still has the AMD dual core
8GB ram
500GB SSD
64 Bit oS.
two hours later from state to finish, and this laptop is very usable now for basic if light use. The duel core AMD is the bottle neck here, but as a whole it is a extremely cheap feeling laptop, the keyboard is mid blowing bad, and the screen is terrible... BUT its usable, and updated to the most recent Win 10 OS and last hours on the battery. I'm thinking this will be a garage computer or something like that..
Why I did this was "just because" - I love doing it (and I hate e waste)