Is This An Option

kah22

I supposed I should have asked is this a sensible option

OK here's the situation. I have an Inspiron 510m laptop. Have it about five years now and to be honest all I use it for is some wordprocessing, running a small number of blogs/websites for which I occasionally use Dreamweaver, a little bit of photo editing (not to much) Photoshop.

Like all computers it has got tired over the years, it has got full with junk and god knows what!! And even though I've had it for over five years I still have 43 per cent left according to the Defragmenter.

Just checked the RAM and there is 512k of it.

So what I'm wondering is this. Would it be sensible to buy an extra 1G of memory - first view about £30. and if I wanted to really speed the machine up could I replace the current hard drive with a new one and keep the old one as a slave. That's actually the bit I'm wondering about as I suppose it is always a good idea to update RAM

Now I know computers are at an all time low at the moment but I guess £400 or £500 is as better in my pocket than a computer manufacturers pocket

Kevin

pcombo

You can upgrade the ram probably. Try the crucial scanner it gives you
good detail to what you have and how much more it can take.
http://www.crucial.com/uk/?gclid=CKe8_d6iu58CFSBk4wodpy1v0Q&cpe=pd_google_uk

You can only have 1 hard drive in a laptop simply because there isn't enough room for 2 and it doesn't have a ribbon cord or jumpers to set. it simply just slides into a port.

ohyeahitssorcy

Best bet is to upgrade the ram if you can and buy yourself an external hard disk then transfer all your user files over to the external and do a nice fresh install of your o/s and the applications you use.

kah22

pcombo wrote: »

You can upgrade the ram probably. Try the crucial scanner it gives you
good detail to what you have and how much more it can take.
http://www.crucial.com/uk/?gclid=CKe8_d6iu58CFSBk4wodpy1v0Q&cpe=pd_google_uk

You can only have 1 hard drive in a laptop simply because there isn't enough room for 2 and it doesn't have a ribbon cord or jumpers to set. it simply just slides into a port.

Great resouorce.

closed

If you reinstalled windows, it would run like new. If you've got 43% disk space left, don't see the point of upgrading the HD, apart from possibly a faster spin speed.

Marty999

I agree with the others. Best plan is to back up all your data to an external hard disk, install more RAM (suggest a total of 1 Gb minimum, preferably 2 Gb if using PhotoShop with XP), then re-install Windows and then copy all your data back. It will be like a new machine.

Altahost

A 5 year old laptop will have been designed to run 2600 build Windows XP home or Pro. When this was initially released 256 Meg of RAM was the suggested minimum requirement. The advent of SP2 and SP3 demanded more Ram.

I have been a laptop/computer engineer for many years now and to be quite honest I have never had a problem with 512Mb RAm even on SP3 for XP. An earlier post stated that reinstalling windows would make it run like new again and that is nearly correct.

If you do have 46% left on your hard drive then you have little need to extend that amount but if you did, the most compact way to do this would be to buy a 2.5" 120Gb P-ATA replaement hard drive. This would require the transfer of data which is actually very simple if you have another PC to take the files while the new disc is prepared.

In my experience, many computer users believe slow downs are a result of "too much stuff on the Hard Drive or "In the memory" another common wrong. I suggest if your PC has slowed down it will be because the registry needs cleaning, the service assembler needs to be addressed to see if there are services running that are not needed and in turn are occupying front end ram thereby slowing Windows or there is Spy/Malware on the system.

As an engineer I have seen and tried all the freebie software out there to see what works and what doesn't. In truth, nothing does the job 100%.

My business repairs many computers such as yours each month. Most are not even attended, they are repaired over the Internet. Diagnosis is our main aim here and it's cheap to find out properly. Any decent engineer will soon work out the best plan for your PC. Before you buy anything, please get the facts about your PC/Laptop, it could save you money.

Incidently, your Laptop will run a maximum of 1Gb DDR1 333 Memory. If your current services demand is high, you will see very little difference in speed if you updated your RAM