A common notebook upgrade these days is replacing the mechanical drive with an SSD. It is a very logical route to go. After all, replacing an entire two year old laptop is going to garner you very little in terms of an upgrade, excepting the SSD. The current gen Core i5 mobile really won’t offer much in terms of performance over the last gen, screens haven’t evolved much, but the SSD offers a very noticeable performance increase. It isn’t an increase that is a few ticks in a synthetic benchmark, it is very large difference that is easily noticeable. This is not relegated to only last gen, but just about any notebook is going to see a huge, perceivable performance boost.

The one hang up here does tend to be drive size. Replacing a 500GB mechanical drive with a 500GB SSD is going to run over $300 for a quality drive. On the other hand, a 128GB SSD that can run your OS and programs can be had in the $90 range. But, what to do with all of your data? One solution is a USB 3.0 external drive. A 500GB drive that will likely be faster than your current drive will only run ~$70. This leaves you with a huge speed upgrade and no loss of storage for only $160. It also gives you the flexibility to take your data/multimedia with you anywhere to be shared on any computer. For many, this is a very obvious route, especially when a high quality, flexible external can be had.