01 The Problem

A retired teacher in Playa Del Rey was ready to buy a new laptop because her HP Pavilion 15 took 4 minutes to boot and froze constantly during Zoom calls. She used it exclusively for email, video calls, and light document editing. A new laptop was going to cost her $600–800.

02 Our Approach

We diagnosed the bottleneck: a 5,400 RPM mechanical hard drive (the original factory drive) and only 8GB of slow DDR4 RAM. We replaced the HDD with a Samsung 870 EVO 500GB SSD and added another 8GB RAM stick (16GB total). Total parts cost: $95. We also performed a clean Windows 11 installation and removed the factory bloatware that had accumulated over 5 years.

03 The Result

Boot time: 4 minutes → 18 seconds. Zoom calls run without freezing. Microsoft Office opens in 2 seconds vs. 25 seconds before. The customer's existing laptop is now faster than most entry-level new laptops — and she saved $500+.