Windows 11, Windows 11S or Windows 11Home

[farmeroman]

The Inspiron 15 5000 series is still showing as a current model. With 8GB of RAM and its factory-fitted SSD, it should be well up to the tasks you are setting it. Your SSD is pretty empty; that 834GB is almost certainly the Free space.

OS(C): 834 GB of 918GB. I read that as 834 used and 84 free, which would be >90 full. (edit: I stand corrected - thanks F1fan)

There are many versions of the Dell 15/5000 series and at almost 5 years old I doubt that this is a 1TB SSD. More like a 1TB hard drive.

[F1fan]

It's BT Broadband and they've just "run some checks on the router" which seemed to involve remotely switching it off and then remotely switching it back on again.  I've just run the same speed test that I did before and this time got "Ping 12s, download 3.71Mb/s, upload 9.95Mb/s" which doesn't seem to be a hill of beans different to what it was before BT's "checks".  We're on the edge of a city.

According to the Settings on my laptop (which is 4.5yrs old) it has 8GB (7.9 usable) and elsewhere says OS(C): 834 GB of 918GB.  If that means anything to you.

STG

As Farmeroman states the speed is horrible, and being in networking there could be numerous reasons and best for BT to investigate. You could test with a desktop PC or a smartphone to see if you get better speeds to narrow down if there are connection issues with the laptop. You say it slows the more you use the laptop or even stops, so could be the laptop or wi-fi card is getting hot and failing when it gets to hot, similar to me in summer 

With your laptop being 4.5 years old it will more than likely have an old mechanical hard drive that has disks inside spinning around where newer laptops will have more modern technology that is alot faster, similar to a USB Flash Drive. You could upgrade your hard drive to a newer SSD drive as previously suggested ( good local computer shop / repair service could do this for you, but obviously they would charge for parts and labour - don't suppose you have any family or friends that have a ' Computergeek ' to help ? ) and also perform a new clean install of Windows and then only the programs you use as you will probably see a difference and be OK for another 2 or 3 years, but all equipment needs to be updated in the end 

If you wish to stay with Dell, they have some good laptops in the clearence section, just narrow down on the items on the left to the screen size 15 that you want and then look through for your price range with a minimum of 8GB of RAM ( memory ) I would have a minimum of 256GB SSD hard drive as looking at your figures if they are the right way around you have only used less than 100GB screenshot attached as an example, and NOT  a processor that is an N**** but an i3, i5 or the AMD Ryzen.

I do hope we are helping and not muddying the waters even further 

[farmeroman]

STG,
As you can see from the various well intentioned replies (including mine) to your original post hoping for a simple answer, there isn't one. There is no definitive "if it's slow do this and it will be fast reply", including "buy a new super fast machine".

Do you have a friend or relative who is an expert? Maybe even someone with a newer laptop who can connect their machine to your Wi-Fi (and also directly to your router*) and run some speed tests?

*I also agree that you should also try connecting your laptop directly to the router with an ethernet cable and run another few speed tests to rule out Wi-Fi issues. Despite what they claim the BT routers are rubbish as are all provider's own branded routers.

Steve.

[farmeroman]

As Farmeroman states the speed is horrible, and being in networking there could be numerous reasons and best for BT to investigate. You could test with a desktop PC or a smartphone to see if you get better speeds to narrow down if there are connection issues with the laptop. You say it slows the more you use the laptop or even stops, so could be the laptop or wi-fi card is getting hot and failing when it gets to hot, similar to me in summer 

I agree (another IT infrastructure guy here). BT should start with the line from the exchange to your house first. And also the socket in your home. Do you have a microfilter (a little box on a small cable connected between your phone line and the router? Depending on the type of wall socket you may or may not need one though. And if you don't and you do have one that will make things worse...

One thing's for sure though; BT rebooting your router and getting a slightly better (but still terrible) signal is not the answer. Are Virgin Media in your area? If so you could consider moving supplier; they are not perfect, but are (or were in my case) definitely better than the old BT copper phone lines. Or have BT cabled your street for fibre? I switched this year as soon as they'd dug up my street. It's fantastic (I still don't use their rubbish router though).

Edit: I also agree with andrewalston; there is no way that the download speed can be slower than upload unless there is a problem. My download speed is always at least 5x upload.

Again it's not always easy to troubleshoot: https://www.businesstechweekly.com/operational-efficiency/business-broadband/upload-speed-higher-than-download-speed/ (OK it's talking about business broadband, but most of the the points are relevant to home too)

[andrewalston]

There are many versions of the Dell 15/5000 series and at almost 5 years old I doubt that this is a 1TB SSD. More like a 1TB hard drive.

Ah yes. I was misled by the current Dell offering. Checking back, at least one review mentions a slow 1TB drive. It also moans about nearly every feature of the machine, especially the display.

[Ian Nelson]

There's a lot to consider .... while you are contemplating you should have a go at the blindingly obvious .... the most likely culprits for slowing your laptop is too many apps, programs or processes running at the same time .... unknown to you.
Here's how to find out easily, and maybe manage to lessen the problem.

Right-click the taskbar and select Task Manager or hit Ctrl-Shift-Escape. Head to the Startup tab and you’ll be able to view each item that runs on startup, along with its impact on the performance of your machine.
Disable any or most of the items that appear in the list and then RESTART your computer.
Anything of great importance can be UN- Disabled and the computer RESTARTED again.

[SmallTownGirl]

As Farmeroman states the speed is horrible, and being in networking there could be numerous reasons and best for BT to investigate. You could test with a desktop PC or a smartphone to see if you get better speeds to narrow down if there are connection issues with the laptop. You say it slows the more you use the laptop or even stops, so could be the laptop or wi-fi card is getting hot and failing when it gets to hot, similar to me in summer 

I agree (another IT infrastructure guy here). BT should start with the line from the exchange to your house first. And also the socket in your home. Do you have a microfilter (a little box on a small cable connected between your phone line and the router? Depending on the type of wall socket you may or may not need one though. And if you don't and you do have one that will make things worse...

One thing's for sure though; BT rebooting your router and getting a slightly better (but still terrible) signal is not the answer. Are Virgin Media in your area? If so you could consider moving supplier; they are not perfect, but are (or were in my case) definitely better than the old BT copper phone lines. Or have BT cabled your street for fibre? I switched this year as soon as they'd dug up my street. It's fantastic (I still don't use their rubbish router though).

Edit: I also agree with andrewalston; there is no way that the download speed can be slower than upload unless there is a problem. My download speed is always at least 5x upload.

Again it's not always easy to troubleshoot: https://www.businesstechweekly.com/operational-efficiency/business-broadband/upload-speed-higher-than-download-speed/ (OK it's talking about business broadband, but most of the the points are relevant to home too)

Well, I had to nip out for an hour or so earlier, so switched the router off before I went with the intention of turning it back on when I got home.  Got home to find husband, who only uses the internet once in a blue moon had switched it back on again about 30 mins after I'd left, so we'll try again later and see if anything happens.

I don't think overheating is a problem.  My laptop is on a raised stand that has an aerated top and whenever I've felt underneath it, I've not felt it to be warm.

Virgin Media are in this area, but I often see comments on the local Facebook group about its service not being that good here, so I'd be doubtful about trying that.  Our BT contract runs until March, so between now and then I'll do some research and see if there's anything that has a better reputation locally.

Anyway, in the meantime, I've cleared a bit of clutter from my current Dell, and ordered another which should be with me in a few days. Will keep you posted - especially if I run into trouble!

Thanks everyone for your help so far.

Happy New Year
STG

[SmallTownGirl]

There's a lot to consider .... while you are contemplating you should have a go at the blindingly obvious .... the most likely culprits for slowing your laptop is too many apps, programs or processes running at the same time .... unknown to you.
Here's how to find out easily, and maybe manage to lessen the problem.

Right-click the taskbar and select Task Manager or hit Ctrl-Shift-Escape. Head to the Startup tab and you’ll be able to view each item that runs on startup, along with its impact on the performance of your machine.
Disable any or most of the items that appear in the list and then RESTART your computer.
Anything of great importance can be UN- Disabled and the computer RESTARTED again.

I did that this morning because it was suggested upthread.

STG

[farmeroman]

Virgin Media are in this area, but I often see comments on the local Facebook group about its service not being that good here, so I'd be doubtful about trying that.  Our BT contract runs until March, so between now and then I'll do some research and see if there's anything that has a better reputation locally.

A couple of points:

Most Virgin complaints seem to be about their support when something goes wrong, but surely they can’t be any worse than your present BT  connection. FWIW I never had to call them about a problem in about five years with them.

Also bear in mind that if you go with anyone other than Virgin you will still be using the same old BT/Openreach copper wiring, so if the fault lies there you’ll take it with you.