Serious Discussion Acer v5-561p-6823 laptop

[ng4ever]

Is it still a decent laptop, not for gaming, just general stuff ? Like maybe making it a NAS, web browsing, streaming, etc

We recently upgraded the old drive to a SSD and 8 GB more ram, so 16 GB of DDR ram now.


Should I put Linux on it?

 

[R3j3ct]

Putting linux on it would bring it back to life, plenty of distro's to choose from. Having the new ssd & 16gb of ram would make linux run nicely in my opinion. i say this cause i run a old lenovo t430 with a I5, 12 gb ram and the original hdd. I say linux cause i use linux as a daily driver on my lenovo.

 

[ng4ever]

Putting linux on it would bring it back to life, plenty of distro's to choose from. Having the new ssd & 16gb of ram would make linux run nicely in my opinion. i say this cause i run a old lenovo t430 with a I5, 12 gb ram and the original hdd. I say linux cause i use linux as a daily driver on my lenovo.

Thanks.

Which linux distro do you use ?

 

[R3j3ct]

I'm running Linux Mint Mate.

 

[Victor M]

According to what Google found, you have a Core i5 - 4200U CPU. That can still run Win 11 OK. Since it doesn't have a TPM chip, you can follow instructions below to bypass that requirement: How to Bypass Windows 11's TPM, CPU and RAM Requirements

Then you can install ReviOS. It removes unnecessary bloat from Windows. It is an app, despite what the name implies. And you apply a template to remove various things. I have used this for 2 weeks and it did speed up my gen 5 Core i5.

Additionally you can turn off Windows' eye candy like animated slide down menus, translucent window frames. etc These settings all come with Windows.

 

[roger_m]

Your laptop will still be fine for basic use, now that you've upgraded to a SSD and 16GB of RAM. Although for basic usage, 8GB is often more than enough. If you are having performance issues, there are few things you can try, such as uninstalling unused apps. On low end hardware, some antiviruses can cause noticeable slowdowns. If your antivirus is doing that, replacing it with a lighter one would give you better performance. Also, upgrading to Windows 11 which has already been suggested, will typically also lead to better performance. One thing to be aware of though, is that when running Windows 11 on unsupported hardware, the yearly feature updates to new builds of Windows 11, have to downloaded and installed manually. They won't be delivered via Windows Update. But you will get all the regular updates.

Linux has been mentioned and some distros are lighter than Windows. But on your hardware, you should get adequate performance from Windows.