What can I upgrade in a laptop?

af_thefragile

Ok, I've got a windows laptop which is a couple of years old. Its a HP something 17" laptop. Its got windows XP i think and it runs pretty slow (mostly cuz its old and full of useless junk!).

As I don't really have the money to buy a new laptop, I was wondering if I could upgrade this old laptop I have... Would it be possible? If so what all can I upgrade on it??

I don't care about the screen and optical drive. Don't think I need too big a hard drive either. I'ld just like to make it more powerful and faster so it can handle some photoshop, light animation and audio and video editing... Not gonna play games on it, I've got a PS3 for that!

Anyway, so you guys think it's possible? I don't really have the laptop near me right now, its hidden somewhere in the house. But if I remember I think its got Intel Core 2 processor with a Nvidia graphics card.

I'll add the full specs a little later, possible tomorrow, as I don't wanna go looking around for it this time of the night and wake everyone up in the house!!

Cheers!!

ED E

af_thefragile wrote: »

is a couple of years old......it more powerful and faster so it can handle some photoshop, light animation and audio and video editing... Not gonna play games on it, I've got a PS3 for that!

Anyway, so you guys think it's possible?...... Intel Core 2 processor with a Nvidia graphics card.

First off, this kind of thing is rarely economical as laptops have a finite lifespan, and their batteries(Usually at least €100 to replace) only live up to about 3 years.

Secondly, " light animation and audio and video editing... " is likely going to be worse than gaming. Video work is up there with the harshest activities you can do on your pc.

You might be able to add RAM and put in a faster core, but, its not necessarily a good idea. OCing on a laptop is a no go, heat and power problems, and for the same reason a new corer troublesome. If you have a cooler designed to handle a 1.5Ghz dual and you stick in a 3Ghz dual, its likely to fry itself. Even if it didn't, your battery wont last as long and your GPU would bottleneck everything.

In short, save for an i3

CreepingDeath

Do you perform any simple maintenance of the laptop ?

Eg. defragment the hard disk ? Free MyDefrag application

I recommend running MyDefrag on your C: drive with the "System Disk Monthly" option.

bhickey

If you right-click on My Computer and click on <Properties> it will tell you in the General tab under the heading 'Computer' about the CPU and RAM in the laptop. These are the most important 2 things in any machine. Post what is says there. You might or might not benefit from upgrading the RAM depending on how much you already have.

If it's an option, then reinstalling Windows will also make a big difference and will bring the laptop back to probably even faster than when you bought it.

Nothingbetter2d

as said above u could add more ram and defrag your hard drive.

as for the rest its not gonna be much of an option.

however if u dont care about the standard xp ui theme u could optimise xp for "best performance" and go into start menu "msconfig" and disable the apps u dont use on a daily basis from starting up each time u boot up your laptop.

if your brave or take the time to google each n every service running on your laptop u could also try disabling the services u dont need "telnet for example"


a registry clean up could also give ya a lil bit of a boost in performance. there are many good registry cleaners ... i use Crap Cleaner which is free cos it also allows u easy access to startup and installed program list.

Skerries

just do a fresh install and put more memory in, thats all i would do with an older laptop as it's not worth spending too much on it

Voodu Child

You can upgrade the hard-drive, the RAM and possibly the CPU. Upgrading the GPU is possible in some very rare cases, but for now you should assume it is not an option (even if it was possible for you, they cost a fortune and upgrade path is usually very limited).

RAM is the easiest to upgrade. Its cheap nowadays so if you're using Photoshop you may as well put in 4GB if your laptop can take it. Check the specs.


A faster HDD usually improves the responsiveness of an old laptop. Bootup times, opening apps, opening big files. Just makes it a bit snappier, especially if the drive that was in your laptop was already a slow model at the time you bought it (which is common as manufacturers are cheapskates). Size and speed are linked, because higher platter densities usually bring more speed. The Seagate Momentus Hybrid drives seem quite good, they have a small SSD in them which is used to speed up common tasks. So if you use photoshop a lot, it will remember this and keep the Photoshop files on the SSD, so it'll load really fast. Same for bootup.


Find out the exact model of your laptop and see what CPU options were available from new, thats usually a sign of what you can upgrade to. If you have a really weak Core2Duo, then upgrading to a high-end one might be worthwhile. However if you were just going from a 2.2GHz to a 2.4GHz then it would be pointless and unnoticeable. CPU upgrade is the most tricky because you'll need to remove the heatsink, clean it, apply thermal paste etc.

ILA

RAM would come to mind simple and reasonably cheap to do. See what the max specs the laptop can take and go for it. There are tons of video tutorials on how to install the RAM card on Youtube.

Defrag the hard drive, and uninstall all the crap. If you've access to a Windows XP CD and can download the HP drivers from their website, then you could format the system partition and install a fresh copy of Windows XP.

imran101

I also use this laptop, if u want increase speed then install ccleaner software and run it, all registry files and junks files deleted,and your computer feels and you feels fresh,then go to windows start menu Run and type %temp% and delete all files, your speed problem is solve.

BostonB

We've a couple of 4yr old laptops still going strong. Unless you are gaming to doing really high end stuff a Core2Duo should still be fine for most things.

Max out the RAM, install a SSD, install a fresh copy of windows. A good SSD would make a big difference, and its something you can reuse in another machine in the future.

You can source OEM batteries on the web easily enough. I got one for mine for about €40 I think. I got mine from adverts./ But if you don't use your laptop on battery much then I wouldn't bother.

CPU upgrades would be very limited. Limited to the max that model supported. So unless you got the base model at the time. There probably isn't much point in upgrading. The SSD is going to make the most of the difference.

Photoshop, video and animation eat loads of disk space. Also they require a fast disk. An SSD is going to be very expensive in large sizes. So consider a hybrid disk as others suggested as the best compromise.

If you had more money, you could keep a SSD in the laptop, and get some fast external disks, for working with photoshop and video. But I expect the cost of that would approach the cost of a new i3 Laptop with some fast disks, or even an internal RAID set up. So thats probably not an option.

Make sure you have a backup disk too.

Post the spec of the laptop and people could give you more specific advise. This tool http://www.piriform.com/speccy will give a list of all the hardware in the laptop and the configuration.

lynchie

imran101 wrote: »

I also use this laptop, if u want increase speed then install ccleaner software and run it, all registry files and junks files deleted,and your computer feels and you feels fresh,then go to windows start menu Run and type %temp% and delete all files, your speed problem is solve.

Deleting files on the HDD has no bearing on the perceived speed of the computer which is usually caused by lots of applications hogging RAM. The amount of RAM is usually insufficient in these cases and the OS consume more time paging memory from RAM <-> HDD.

BostonB

I don't think thats true. I've often seen hard drives that were full or nearly full have a dramatic impact on the speed of a computer. Freeing up space and then defragging them seems to makes noticeable if not massive difference.

I've also noticed with Windows 7 even when I've plenty of RAM free it still uses the hard drive constantly, even through I've everything turned off that should require it.