syswizard 

I have two SSD's....about 4 years old. Are more recent SSD's faster ?

The new SSD might be slightly better but I don't think anything major. If you have a SSD that's a Samsung brand, you might be already hitting top speeds. If you are you are any other brand, you might see an improvement.

syswizard 

No doubt about it. Like I mentioned before, I am reluctant to upgrade my hardware as I must then re-install AND re-configure over 50 applications. Note: I am running Windows 7. My greatest fear is that one day service packs to any of my applications will have a warning: "Do not apply this update to a Windows 7 computer"

That's going to happen eventually as EOL for Windows 7 was on the 17th of Jan 2020. I don't think you can get another 3 years with the apps.

Have you tried this?

Quoting 

1. Open Performance Information and Tools by clicking the Start button , and then clicking Control Panel. In the search box, type Performance Information and Tools, and then, in the list of results, click Performance Information and Tools. 2. Click Adjust visual effects. If you're prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation. 3. Click the Visual Effects tab, click Adjust for best performance, and then click OK.

What's the CPU utilization %? What's the memory? Disk?

You can use this to see what its hitting too, lets see.

What are your thoughts on going to an OS like Fedora or Ubuntu? The system requirements are a little less, and wine support has been improving.

RichSteps 

What's the CPU utilization %? What's the memory? Disk?

Very low....around 5% max when it spikes. This perplexes me as I am running some pretty hairy indicators on Multicharts.

RichSteps 

What are your thoughts on going to an OS like Fedora or Ubuntu? The system requirements are a little less, and wine support has been improving.

No interest at all.
Have you ever tried to launch applications into a separate core ?
Does that help I wonder ?

Recently I found this link again in one of my USB sticks and I think it is worth to post it here in this thread. As I even recognized on one of my systems in the families of W 8.1, a very high usage in the RAM (System and processor activity), I used this little tools to deactivate some running's and after doing so, this one specific system was much more stable and showed much less activity by over using the RAM throughout system and processor activity.

In the link: (https://www.grc.com/dns/benchmark.htm) you got to "Freeware", which is on the left upper side and download what ever little tool you think you need. You may even want to test all of them and this will not do any harm to your Windows system as long as you understand what the tool is doing. Even then, before you start to use this little tools, be sure you have made an actual "System Restore point" before you start using them.

Symple

syswizard 

Very low....around 5% max when it spikes. This perplexes me as I am running some pretty hairy indicators on Multicharts. No interest at all. Have you ever tried to launch applications into a separate core ? Does that help I wonder ?

Sorry for the late response, but looking over the messages you said that you don't want to reinstall or reconfigure your apps.

Do you know about clonezilla?

It's a free way to clone your drive, do the upgrade, and things should work exactly the same way.

If you don't mind paying and want a MUCH better UI/UX, check out Acronis.

You should be able to clone your drive, upgrade your parts, and not worry about anything.