Kona before you decide what to do you need to decide what areas of slowness you are trying to address. 

Win 10 and its apps need Ram.  I would think 8GB for a laptop would be the right target.

If you do not mind some lag in win/app start-up you can skip the SSD.

The AMD A6 with Radeon graphics may be a bottleneck depending on the graphics/games you are running.

A current I3 or I5 would speed things up and you would have to find the right graphics card.

So it comes down to is it a Loading/Startup slowness issue or a program Running/Throughput issue?

Sounds like it may be both.  My own preference has been to get adequate Ram with good CPU/Graphics and pass up the SSD to keep costs lower.

This is a good example:  HP Laptop

I would never buy a Dell they are underpowered for what you pay for.

Now I would take it back, and get a quad core. Option 2. I guess 8 gigs of RAM would work as long as you play nonething bigger than an immense map. If you don't use a quad core you are not at least going to see a performance increas from it's multicore capability. An SSD to speed up the game sounds nice. As far as the processor it is a good idea to keep with something that has been made in the last 2 years.

You could probably save a few bucks by ordering it online.

Guys the games I am playing all are older ones. The newest game I have, Monopoly, is 6 years old. The rest are much older. They play fine, they just take up to a minute to load, and that is acceptable. There seems to be no lag booting up or opening things like Chrome or Thunderbird. Word and Excel start in seconds. 

It's a Dell Inspiron 15, 3000 series. Have you seen the teardown and upgrade procedure on YouTube? It's scary...

But boy does that Mac still sound like fun...

For mine, the best upgrade to boost speed and performance is a SSD over a HHD, then if you can afford it get the extra 4GB of RAM later.  To go with an i3 or i5 and 8GB RAM will cost you a lot more, and even then you mightn't get the kind of performance you're seeking if it only has a HDD running a 5400RPM.

As for the graphics, AMD isn't that bad these days, so unless you're playing high-end games that demand the highest frame rates, the AMD will most likely do the job okay when combined with an SSD and more RAM.  Just remember to keep the drivers for everything updated and you should be fine.

Starkers, good point, however I do not feel comfortable doing that upgrade. Nor do I know how to load Windows on to a SSD. Unless it's exactly like loading it on to a hard drive. You see I'm fine taking the screws out of the back and removing the DVD-RW drive. I get kinda nervous when it come to popping up the keyboard and undoing three ribbon cables. I'm afraid I will never get them back in, or break them, or once they are in I cracked one and something will not work from that point on. Those little cables are razor thin and quite tricky to get back in the motherboard connector...

If you care about speed, dont buy notebooks. Especially not the ones with the AMD pre-Ryzen CPUs, dual-core additionally - in 2018 - that was really bizzare idea, especially for someone who is into computers.

If you are hellbent on laptop, then the option 2 is the answer. Definitely dont invest into the one you bought, neither buy 8-years old Mac.

Then try this it has the SSD and 8GB of Ram.  But only the SSD for storage.

SSD Laptop.

Sadly I can't have a desktop. I'm at a point in my life where I'm renting rooms from people and I am never able to put down roots due to a few factors so I'm always needing to relocate every year or so. This makes having a laptop the better option. 

So why not the Mac? The one I am looking at hasn't been used too much and is in near mint condition. 

@Big Dog - Don't need a touchscreen. :/ 

Oh, i see, that is too bad.

Not Mac, cause its 2010 you said? That is definitely not going to be "fast". 

Ah but OSX uses was less resources to run than Windows 10. Significantly less. :/

They say that technology doubles every six months, or two years. So that apple would be at least 16 times better nowdays are you saying that the resources would make that much of a difference.

I don't see how that's going to make the Mac a better, faster machine, not one from 2010 anyway.  Thing is Win 10 was created with SSDs in mind.  Sure it'll run on a HDD, but obviously better on a 7200 RPM than a 5400 RPM, and your machine has a 5400 RPM, as do most HDD based laptops.

The SSD is definitely the better medium for Win 10, and to boost the performance of most any PC, upgrading from HDD to SSD is the way to go, given how SSD prices have come down dramatically in recent times.

Put it this way, one of the first upgrades I did was from HDD to SSD, and the jump in speed and performance was significant... same CPU and RAM, same machine, same everything, just a more efficient medium for the OS.

As for adding a SSD, you could probably find a tech who would do it inexpensively for you, same with RAM, if you purchased it from his establishment rather than purchasing it elsewhere then taking it in to be installed.

Not really seeing how that makes it not work for you... but its your call.  Don't use the touch screen feature use the mouse and keyboard only instead.

What I was trying to show you is to find a pre-built with SSD in your price range it will be an AMD A8 build. 

It seems though that what you really want is that Mac to work out.  It is too old.   Choose something else instead of that old Mac.

https://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/laptops/dell-15-inspiron-3000 

If that's what you got you chose 'pretty ordinary'.

Minimum it'd need is that other 4gig ram and an SSD.

Tho....if you had a second one you'd have matching bookends...

A 'new' machine in that price range is never going to be much good.  Russian Roulette with a second hand machine of higher specs for the same price would have been a better option...particularly if either choice saw you do a full format and reinstall...

 That's it!  It 'd be the better, more economical option to get a faster machine right now.  The idea of taking this one back and getting an Intel i3 or i5 with an SSD and 8Gb of RAM is going to cost a whole lot more.  Even something with the next gen AMD processor is going to cost more.

In most cases I would advise against upgrading a lower-end machine, but in Kona's case with this one, a SSD and an extra 4GB of RAM would do the trick and be more cost effective than returning it to buy a higher-end machine.

As I recall, Frogboy advocated upgrading with a SSD and said it was the most cost effective way to improve speed and performance.... and he's no fool when it comes to computer related matters.