I've had a solid, reliable Dell Inspiron 5558 laptop for 5-6 years now. Just over a year ago I bought an Acer Chromebook 715 and I was very happy with it. Like this Dell laptop, the Acer is a well-built system. Like most Chromebook models, it has solid state drive (SSD) technology. Unlike my previous Lenovo Chromebook N22 (which was a good unit too), the Lenovo was a low powered device; the Chromebook 715 is much more modern and fast.
A few months after I got the Acer Chromebook 715 I found another good deal on an Acer Aspire 5 A515-55. This model was an end of the model run, and was trimmer, thinner, and lighter than the Chromebook, but one thing it had in common with the Chromebook was the SSD.
With that background, back to the Dell - it's been a very good device and it's still solid, and it still works, but compared to the other systems, it's been getting to the point that only antiX with a lean window manager worked well (with reasonable speed and response). Though many distributions still run well, they show their age on the Dell. Processor-wise, it has plenty of process slots and plenty of memory, and gobs of disk space too, the perfect place to test. What it was lacking was speed.
I decided to get a Kingston A400 SSD; reportedly ten times faster than a standard 7200 RPM traditional hard drive. I know that this isn't the TOP END SSD; I rarely buy TOP END, especially now that I'm retired, but I do look for reasonable deals, and this one fit my budget.
Here I am today on the Dell - with the A400 SSD installed, and with 3-4 distributions installed. Now, with antiX 21 Base runit installed and using Ungoogled Chromium to write this, I can report that this system, while never to be confused with a super fast machine, is still the "stable workhorse" that I purchased, but now it has "new life". I kept the hard drive; should this SSD fail, I can always either get another SSD or reinsert the original hard drive. Meanwhile, this machine is running very well and boots much faster than it did previously.
