Upgrade or new laptop for VirtualBox / Vagrant / PhpStorm?

Question

Iron

I have a laptop Acer i3-3120M, 4GB DDR3
As soon as I started using virtualization for PHP development, I started to feel a lack of power.
I think maybe upgrade?
For example, stick a 256 GB SSD, put 8 GB of RAM. How much will this affect the speed of PhpStorm and virtual machines? Will the synchronization of file systems m / y of the guest and home OS be noticeably accelerated? Or will everything rest on a weak percentage?

Answer 1

Are virtual machines required?
Do you need different PHP versions for different sites?
PhpStorm loves memory very much, and here a piece of it is eaten by a virtual machine.
Plus, working with files through extra layers - brakes are also inevitable.

Answer 2

An SSD is a must, PhpStorm is sluggish without it.
It is also necessary to add memory, but, I'm afraid, 8GB is not enough to work with virtual machines. If you can expand up to 16GB, then you should do it. Otherwise, change the laptop.
Once when I started three virtual machines (two for one project and one I tested) and 16GB was not enough.