There are few ways to make a laptop faster that are as easy and cost-effective as replacing your existing hard drive with a solid state drive (SSD).

CNET editor Dong Ngo shows how you can replace your computer's hard drive with a solid-state drive and be significantly happier with your life.

By adding a solid-state drive to a budget laptop, either as a hard-drive replacement or companion, you can realize noticeable gains and get additional life from your portable PC.

For example, booting up a computer with an SSD can take less than 10 seconds, while the same process on an HDD might take over a minute.

Got an old laptop kicking about that is now just too darn slow to be useful? Well, breathe new life into it by following T3's laptop HDD to SSD installation guide.

It boots & works fine, but the basic computer is so slow to begin with that it's hard to detect much of a speedup with the SSD.