Shop for a new machine.
Something with at least a high end I5 and 8GB of ram.
If the budget allows move up to an I7 for that editing stuff.
Since you work from home a desktop would give you better value.
Disclaimer: I am a noob. So hold on, this is going to be a journey. I need help with diagnosing the necessary repairs and/or upgrades and I need help deciding whether it would be smarter to just buy new. Both of these laptops are old hand-me-downs, mind you.
The first laptop, my fallen love, is the Compaq c700. This small beast performed well when it came to having tons of tabs open at once. The bad news is I, like some sort of untamed *******, used to lift this piece and carry it around by the screen. I didn't know any better. Well, I now know better since the screen now turns white as soon as it comes on. I've replaced the lcd cable but to no avail. I've ordered a replacement lcd screen and tried that with no success. I've hooked it up to a different screen which seems to work just fine until after I boot up the OS. As soon as I hear the "welcome" jingle for the Windows Login screen, the monitor goes directly to sleep. But get this, if I run the machine in Safe Mode, then the monitor does not go to sleep. So confusing to me. What's a simple man to do?
The other laptop, the Compaq cq62, is remarkably slow. I have no idea what's making it so slow. I'm running it with Linux mint. I have virtually nothing on this computer as I keep all of my data on an external hard drive. I can provide the specs and some sort of benchmark if you can tell me what tests to run.
This is the true horror... I use my laptop to work from home.. and the slowness of this computer completely destroys my productivity.. I'll have to spend an extra 60 seconds waiting on processes which should only take 30 seconds to complete. So if I'm planning to do 8 hours of work, I have to spend an extra 16 hours of pure waiting because of all of this damn buffering. It's madness. my job generates roughly $10-$15 in cash value per hour. So when pondering the possible fixes to these issues, can we also discuss whether it would be cost effective for me to take time away from work in order to repair these machines in lieu of just buying a new or refurbished one? My immediate need in a computer as of now is just to be able to smoothly browse multiple tabs at once. An average of 6 at a time. However I would also like to eventually have a machine which can handle audio and video editing. I know that changes the game a bit. I also acknowledge that this is a full mosaic of problems and I thank everyone for their patience and charity in sifting through this mess of mine with me. Thank you so much.

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