Laptop RAM

[allthatisman]

I have a few year old Dell Inspiron E1505 with a Core 2 Duo 1.66ghz and 2 gb of DDR667... I am going to buy a new hard drive for it:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136280

But I am wondering if it would really be worth it to replace the 2x1gb sticks for 2x2gb sticks? As some of you may already know, DDR2 has gone up in price quite a it, and to make the switch would cost about $100. Would it be worth it on this machine(little to no gaming)? I am currently running Windows 7 64bit Ultimate with no real issues, aside from a slow HDD...

Also, anyone go from a 5400 rpm drive to something like the WD Scorpio Black?

 

[CurseTheSky]

A 7200 RPM drive should be noticeably faster, but it won't be night and day. It may also chew up your battery life a bit (something like 5-20 minutes less), and in some cases, causes extra noise and vibration. When I replaced the 5400 RPM in my girlfriend's XPS M1530 with a 7200 RPM, we noticed only improvement and no drawbacks.

If you really want a speed boost and can deal with less storage (possibly buy an external?) take the extra $100 you would spend on RAM, combine that with the price you'd already be spending on a new hard drive, and try to get something like an 80 GB SSD. That will give you a huge performance increase in day to day tasks.

 

[jjmIII]

Also, anyone go from a 5400 rpm drive to something like the WD Scorpio Black?

Thats a worthwhile upgrade IMO. Cheap too if you sell the old drive afterward. I noticed it being quicker than the WD Blue 5400 I took out.

 

[Hacp]

If you have 100 bucks to spend, get an SSD. SSD>more memory.

 

[jjmIII]

EMCYSNZ37

4gb @ fair price, code above makes it $90

 

[Blain]

With that 1.66GHz processor, just upgrade the HD, no need bothering with more memory.

 

[allthatisman]

With that 1.66GHz processor, just upgrade the HD, no need bothering with more memory.

That's what I am thinking as well... I can't justify ssd money for this laptop and what I use it for, plus I have not been blown away by them like so many other people... Newegg has that 320 Scorpio black for $54.99 fs... That is a lot of storage on pretty much the fastest hdd you can buy for a laptop. So many people want to justify the ssd thing, but after having three of them, I just don't get it. But hey, that's for another thread thanks for the input

 

[razel]

Interesting... if the SSD didn't make you happy, I doubt the 7200 RPM will make you happy as well. Were you disappointed with the SSD improvement or the cost? I used to stick to the $2/gb limit, until SSD prices dipped to below $100... then I got rid of all mechanical drives in primary OS duties and moved large media files to external USB drives. I can't believe I didn't do those things earlier. Makes alot of sense. But to each their own... we all have different usage.

 

[allthatisman]

Well to be fair, I went from a Velociraptor to an SSD, and I didn't notice much of a difference. In my opinion it isn't worth the price premium that the tech is demanding at this point. SSD's are relatively unproven in the reliability area either, Velociraptors and new 7200 rpm hdds are cheap, reliable, and BIG. I tend to think that the praise SSD's recieve is more or less placebo effect and people trying to justify a large purchase. There are some applications where SSD's rule, but most people will never see those results... but hey, that's just my opinion...