I have the opposite experience. 4GB of ram + i3-4005U + spinning drive, windows update is unbearable. That's on top of anything newer than 2016 being unusable anyway.

I don't do media on it, so I've been quite happy running 9front lately.

> spinning drive

There's your problem. Even the cheapest of SATA SSD will massively outperform almost any laptop hard disk drive when it comes to random I/O. And it'll probably increase your battery life a smidge as well.

I wouldn't put applications on any spinning rust these days, especially laptop 5400 (or worse!) drives.

$40 for a 512GB SATA SSD that'll blow the socks off whatever spinning drive you have.

https://www.microcenter.com/product/659868/inland-profession...

I don't have the budget for that at the immediate moment, but yes, I know.

I do think my point still stands though. I don't think it's acceptable for software to run this slow, even on this. I'm talking windows has been idling for hours and basic tasks like clicking on the volume slider are sluggish.

> $40 for a 512GB SATA SSD

On a side note: I'm fascinated HOW cheap SSD storage has become. Really looking into changing my backup drives to SSDs instead of good old spinning drives...