Should I upgrade?

[TheoPetro]

I have a hp pavilion dv8000 notebook with 1GB of ram 1.8ghz athalon processor and an 80GB 5400rpm HDD (IDE).

Is an upgrade to 2GB of ram and a 32GB SSD (IDE) worth it for ~$500???

I dont really want to get a whole new laptop so I figured that if this upgrade would offer some significant improvement over my current setup that it would tide me over for a year or so.

I use the laptop for mostly business stuff MS Office, Peachtree accounting, web browsing, quicken, etc. The biggest speed issue I am having is vista business edition. It seems like after I installed that everything (speed wise) that was tolerable before became incredibly annoying (imho stuff takes too long to load, not responsive what so ever). I typically have 12-20 windows open that I am active working on at any given time (I am at 14 right now).

good idea? bad idea?

 

[boomhower]

I would go for the ram but skip the SSD. To overpriced at this point, just go with a 7200RPM drive if you could live with a little hit to your battery life. the ram will make the biggest difference in vista.

 

[Rockinacoustic]

Definitely upgrade to 2GB of RAM if your heavily multitasking in Vista, that will give you much more improvement than any faster HDD would. The difference between 5400 and 7200rpm is negligible IMO, not worth the money.

 

[Parasitic]

Any reason why you want SSD?
The technology really isn't that mature yet in the consumer market, so I think it's best that you wait. Hell, there's even that Asus email going around about the SSD in eeePC being only good for 100k cycles.

Although it is nice to have a super silent computer

 

[TheoPetro]

Originally posted by: Parasitic
Any reason why you want SSD?
The technology really isn't that mature yet in the consumer market, so I think it's best that you wait. Hell, there's even that Asus email going around about the SSD in eeePC being only good for 100k cycles.

Although it is nice to have a super silent computer

The laptop gets carried around a lot between class, work and home and I have already had a HDD die on me. Im not sure if it was because of stress or if it was just a bad drive but I figured that an SSD would be a heck of a lot faster and if the laptop was banged around a bit it could take it better. If it really isnt a good idea then I will stick with the ram but I figured I would find out about the SSD anyway.