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| Thread ID: 75160 | 2006-12-18 19:03:00 | Upgrading a laptop!? | silu (9854) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 507716 | 2006-12-18 19:03:00 | Hi guys, I'm a bit of a noob so I'm asking for some help of how to upgrade my wife's laptop to make it faster again: Its a HP Pavilion zv5000 Intel Celeron 2,8 192 mb RAM Windows XP Service Pack 2 27,9gb HD (10,9 free) I thought first to upgrade the RAM and found through here what I can get www.memoryx.net Could I just install the 512mb card or can I at most only double? Also is it recommended to get the laptop specific ram or is a cheap one from DSE or the like as good as? Also I run ccleaner, spybot and AVG regularily. Delete old files and defrag when needed. What else could I do? Thanks for your help. |
silu (9854) | ||
| 507717 | 2006-12-18 19:15:00 | it's low on ram and a 5123mb will make a big difference......you can try dse ram cause they're pretty good about things for example if it's just not compatible they'll take it back as a return very readily..... | drcspy (146) | ||
| 507718 | 2006-12-18 19:56:00 | If your going to upgrade your wife's laptop you may as well get 1 GB of RAM since it is pretty cheap these days depending of course on what she mainly uses it for. Also keep a look out for the new Intel Core Duo chips which are starting to appear in many laptops. These are faster and run cooler and can multitask better than the "old" centrino chips. You might want to check out the maximum amount of RAM the laptop will take. Most laptops now days will take up to 2GB which would make your wife's machine pretty fast. Not sure if your interested or not but Apple's new Intel Macbook and MacBook Pro are now amongst the fastest laptops on the market. They can also run Bootcamp which means they can run WinXP natively. And unlike XP, OS X doesn't slow down and get full of kludge over time. Anyways just a thought. Cheers winmaguy |
winmacguy (3367) | ||
| 507719 | 2006-12-18 20:13:00 | There would be 256MB RAM in that laptop, not 192MB but the "missing" RAM is being used by the graphics . As drcspy says, upgrading to 512MB will make a difference but not spectacularly so . Upgrading to 1GB is probably a waste of time . As for the type of RAM to get you need to buy notebook memory (SO-DIMMs), not desktop memory as it won't fit . I can't find the specs for that machine after a quick Google but it is likely that the hard drive speed would have an effect on the speed also . Laptop hard drives are slower than desktops, especially on cheap machines or those a couple of years old . You could gain a performance increase by upgrading to a faster hard drive . Running CCleaner regularly to clear out temp files would help a bit to regain speed, as would defragging and uninstalling unused programs . Also check that unnecessary programs are not being loaded at startup . |
FoxyMX (5) | ||
| 507720 | 2006-12-18 21:13:00 | it's low on ram and a 5123mb will make a big difference......you can try dse ram cause they're pretty good about things for example if it's just not compatible they'll take it back as a return very readily..... You need a 64bit OS to use 5GB of RAM. ;) |
pcuser42 (130) | ||
| 507721 | 2006-12-18 21:27:00 | aarrrrggggghhhhhh ! | drcspy (146) | ||
| 507722 | 2006-12-19 04:02:00 | You need a 64bit OS to use 5GB of RAM. ;) And the only home based systems that will currently utilise over 4GB RAM are Mac and Linux assuming the relevant software app has been written to recognise it. So things like Photoshop, DV editing, AutoCAD etc. Don't worry about Word though - 512MB would be more than sufficient. |
winmacguy (3367) | ||
| 507723 | 2006-12-19 04:26:00 | Thanks for your replies. I will go and buy a 512mb RAM SO-DIMM card from DSE and I'm sure that this will make the laptop faster. Lets just hope I don't mess it up and fry my motherboard (have done it before :( ) | silu (9854) | ||
| 507724 | 2006-12-19 04:27:00 | It might be a waste of money upgrading that unit as the spec is not all that hot by present day standards. Try a defrag. The ccleaner needs a bit of savvy to use or it will all end in tears for you. I find a good registry fixer works wonders with these older machines. If you must, get another 256MB, you might get a 5% improvement in performance. |
PENTIUM (426) | ||
| 507725 | 2006-12-19 04:38:00 | Thanks for your replies. I will go and buy a 512mb RAM SO-DIMM card from DSE and I'm sure that this will make the laptop faster. Lets just hope I don't mess it up and fry my motherboard (have done it before :( ) How old is your wife's laptop? |
winmacguy (3367) | ||
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