Should I upgrade my 2011 laptop or buy a new one?

[jorgex0.o]

My Acer TimelineX 5830TG is working great.

I'm a software developer and I use it with Ubuntu, and occasionally I need Windows 7 virtualized for Photoshop / Office.
The apps I use are mostly PHPStorm, Navicat, Docker, Firefox, Chrome and not much more. Maybe Intellij IDEA some times.

A new computer is around $1000, but with many features I don't need like a super NVidia graphic card.

What I currently have: nvidia 540m, i5 2540m, 6gb dd3 (2+4), 640gb hard drive disk.

I was thinking in buying:

• 
  2x8gb ddr3 sodimm for $120 (my laptop specs says up to 8gb, but the processor supports up to 16gb)
  SSD for another $120.

This would improve greatly my laptop performance and it costs only $240 rather than $1000.

Apart from this, what laptop can you recommend me if I decide to get a new one? Key points I'm looking for:

• 
  Linux support
  Backlit keyboard
  Numeric keyboard
  Full HD display
  2KG or less.
  16GB RAM (but this can be added)
  512GB SSD (but this can be added)

 

[schaft]

Just get the SSD. Trust me, its totally worth it. You will feel a bit regret for not using SSD sooner. 3 years ago, I installed my useless netbook (toshiba nb200 with only 2Gb ram) with 120Gb OCZ SSD (my first SSD and was retired from my main pc due to small space). I gave it window 8 and the result is surprising, it can go against i5 laptop (using HDD) in term of speed in normal use. Even beat the i5 in term of start up. The great thing of using SSD is that it actually save your time, meaning you did not waste your life on useless crunching data time usage due to slow HDD.

Just get the SSD first. You will not lose money since you can move it to your new laptop when needed.

I am not a software developer, so I didn't know the need of ram for your work. But 6Gb is plenty. Try the SSD first, if you feel still not enough then you can later consider the ram.

I would recommend against going after samsung evo 960 as your spec might not support to optimize it. 960 evo is like 3x faster than normal SSD but price is also 3x. Normal SSD is 3 to 4 times faster than standard HDD (laptop HDD is much slower than standard HDD). So standard SSD should boost your build a lot.

Using SSD also save electric bill. My netbook battery was only hold 1 hour before SSD, and can hold 2 hours after SSD.

Good luck

 

[jorgex0.o]

Thanks didn't know about the Evo arr you saying that the rest of specs are going to be a bottleneck?

 

[schaft]

don't worry about bottleneck. Just grab the standard generation of SSD and you're good. Just avoid the 1st generation of SSD which already rare. 2014 above model are good. Evo is a bit too much, not worth it for laptop, only worth it for $1500+ build pc. I am still using $120 ocz arc 100 with 480Gb on my main gaming pc and I am still happy with it.