Upgrade An Old Laptop?

[Jiu-Jitsu]

@phetaroi

So you finally got a laptop ? Can you tell me what specifications it has ?

http://h20424.www2.hp.com/campaign/consume...avilion-dv3.asp

[robertthegreat]

I have an old Toshiba 2410 satellite circa 2001 had the first XP home on it 256 RAM slow as a snail been laying around now for years. Gave it my daughter with a usb keyboard Thai /English and it was all ways locking up /freezing. so after reading this thread in BKK yesterday. Went to Pan Thip bought 2x 512mb Ram second hand 500B also it had a slot for a wireless PCI card bought one of those 150B. Got back home put the 2x 512 mb in fired it up showed 1GB memory and was fast. Has mentioned with all the updates it was slow. Dropped the wireless card in Atheros make down loaded the drivers and that worked perfect. Not bad upgrade for 650B it could do with a bigger hard drive only 20GB IDE i thought at 1500B for 160GB IDE drive was a bit steep for a old laptop and could not find a second hand one above 40GB. I have a spare 120GB sata in a caddy will transfer all my music on to it and use it has a music player in the house May be put windows media player on it later for the visuals

[fantuzi]

Thanks to all who responded to my OP...well, almost all.

The various points you've all made convinced me to buy a new laptop.

I had same dilemma and similar comp HP.My advice? - buy new and..upgrade old one.Upgrade will cost you not much;you could do it all yourself,BUT!

in my case - only one PCClinic had chips,which were the match.Another chips - which were described as compatible - did not work.There is website

which helps to find matching memory chips,but HP is special case - you have to talk with competent people.HD you have 40 or 60G?Fix new - 250G.

Having two comps is very usefull and helps in troubleshooting,back-up etc.You can use it as multimedia device - for movies and videos security center to watch house or as a fax machine.

Upgrade will cost you may be 5000B and is easy like morning porrige.If you do not do it - your old comp will be useless soon.

Sorry, HP is not a special case. In most instances, unless you are running Servers etc, Low Density RAM is what is needed. High Density will work, but only half the capacity will be recognised.

My comp was special,very common and popular model that time.First it landed with one shop which claimed to be HP agent;after one month I had to take it back - because they could not find memory chips.

I followed advice from website:memoryx.........,bought chips and.....waste of money,did not work.I started to look for competent PCClinic - everybody was telling me:"Oh,yes we can do it!"

but when they saw my comp out of bag - there was 2nd line:"no,sorry,this one we can not".The third guy,seeing dispair in my eyes told me who could do it.So,in all SimLimSQ

there was one PCClinic which had the right chips.3 minutes job it was,and guy was making jokes,how could I use that comp with 256M!Chips had to be exactly the same.

Comp landed with kids and it works well till today with all strange attachments like - fast USB adapter,wi-fi dongle and seperate video camera.Model number was something like 1905.(it doesnt correspond with year of production!)

Try to upgrade many HP or SonyVAIO,he!he! - same experience,even with HD:officialy"non-upgradable"...cest'la vie

[bendejo]

...

XP is not that bad I have 6 HDs running on WinXP SP3 with RAID 0 and AHCI and this for many months without any problems.

You miss my point: it was about running XP on the newer hardware that XP doesn't support. The new laptop (an HP) officially did not support XP, so all the drivers were for Vista (this is pre Win7). It was possible to get them working under XP, but tenuous. It was a kicking and screaming upgrade for me.

[welo]

I see it like this:

Money matters, go for an upgrade. Money doesn't matter, go buy a new one.

IMHO some questions should have been asked before giving advise:

How much RAM does the laptop have now?

What software does he use?

How long since Windows XP has been installed from scratch?

If the same software ran fast enough two years ago, why should the laptop be underpowered now? Re-installing Windows XP and a memory upgrade to satisfy service pack 2 and risen demands due to larger image resolutions might have done wonders.

But again, we don't know enough details.

Anyway, if money is not much of an issue, buying a new laptop might be less hassle with the further benefit of upgrading to state-of-the-art hardware and software.

OP might still upgrade the old laptop (memory only) and give to his kids or a friend or sell it. Please don't let it rot in a corner, that's a waste of resources.

welo

[teletiger]

I have a Vaio circa 2004. 256k memory. Just too slow now although a perfectly capable machine.

Trying to find pc2100 DDR 266 512 K modules for it. Tried the DDR333 512K modules and they wouldn't work. Can't find any DDR 266's anywhere.

After recently upgrading a pavillion PC (2004) from 512K to 2GB, with stunning results, I'm reluctant to buy a new laptop when a 1600 Baht upgrade is all I need.

I'd appreciate any help on locating the DDR266 modules.

Regards.