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Best Upgrades for my Laptop

M

Minot

Member
I'm running a Dell Inspiron 1564 laptop with an Intel Core i5 430M with 4 GB DDR3-1066 and a standard laptop 2.5" 320 GB HDD (whatever Dell installed). I don't play games so my integrated Intel Graphics is fine. I'm using Windows 7 64-bit.

I plan to wait 6 months to a year before I upgrade the laptop outright. What I'd like to do is buy some time between now and then. I plan to upgrade the memory to the system capacity of 8 GB DDR3-1333. I'm debating whether I should replace the laptop's HDD for an SSD. I think this would help performance greatly. I looked and right now I'm only using 50 GB on my current drive. I think I could survive with a 120 GB SSD. I do not know if there are any special considerations for SSD use in a laptop that I need to consider for compatibility.

Do you think the SSD upgrade is a good option? Are there any other "upgrades" you'd recommend refresh my laptop for up to a year? Thanks!

-MINOT-
 
The 120GB SSD and more RAM will definitely be a noticeable performance booster. Do it as JWade suggests - SSD first then RAM. You may not need a new laptop for a while longer.
 
Yea ssd is definitely the best choice, as mentioned above. Ram is easy to upgrade, but 4gb is not bad and you can easily get by by running fewer things at once. You most likely won't notice any speed increases unless you are constantly exceeding 4gb now.

Upgrading to ssd, however, will give you immediate and noticeable gains in system response.... it is also easier to transplant into your next laptop. I would say 120/128gb is enough... you can always use a traditional spinning hard drive for 'static' content (things like movies, music, pictures etc...)

The only things to really look out for is SATA III (Might as well... only slightly more expensive than SATA II but you will be futureproof and also SATA III drives in general are more recent, possibly less buggy and more currently supported. Make sure you get a 2.5'' drive which the standard size for laptop hard drives (I used to have an insprion 15 as well and it uses this size).

One other upgrade I would recommend is to take the time to do a complete OS reinstall.... instead of making an image of your current hard drive and possibly running into some alignment problems (I don't know anything about this... just read about it) you might as well do a fresh install of your OS, take the time to reinstall the programs you use (weed out things you don't need!) and move your data over 'by hand'. Your laptop is actually not that old.... doing this plus adding the SSD should make your laptop feel new again=P
 
What those guys said is great with a qualifier. If you put a SSD in that laptop, you will see immediate benefits. However, if you later upgrade to an ultrabook, that SSD will likely not fit and you'll end up having to sell the SSD or find another use for it. Since SSDs are a little pricey currently, are dropping in price, and ultrabooks are outfitted with them anyway, its a consideration you should keep in mind.
 
Thanks for all of the inputs. I will indeed do both the SSD upgrade and the memory (since it is so cheap). And yes, I will absolutely do a complete OS reinstall with my new drive.

Is there a particular SSD brand or specific SSD processor (intel vs sandforce vs others) that I should check out for use in a laptop?
 
Minot said:
Thanks for all of the inputs. I will indeed do both the SSD upgrade and the memory (since it is so cheap). And yes, I will absolutely do a complete OS reinstall with my new drive.

Is there a particular SSD brand or specific SSD processor (intel vs sandforce vs others) that I should check out for use in a laptop?
Click to expand...

I usually avoid OCZ for their poor customer service, If i were to get a drive today I would lean towards intel or samsung.
 
I want to thank you all for your advice. I completed my upgrade last night. I went with a 128 GB Crucial M4 SSD and 8 GB (2 x 4 GB) DDR3 10666 G.Skill laptop memory. My reinstall of Windows 7 and all associated software was painless and I can already sense the new found snappiness of my laptop. This should definitely delay my laptop upgrade for a while until Ivy Bridge based laptops hit the scene... or maybe even until Haswell mobile chips arrive.

-MINOT-
 
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