- Nov 6, 2011
- 6,298
- 64
- 91
I was in a bit of a quandry with my old business laptop... a 2005 Dell 6000 with a slow single core Pentium M (1.73GHz,) tiny HDD (40GB,) and little RAM (1 stick 512mb DDR2.) It was almost to the point of just not working.
I queried folks here about upgrading and the consensus was to just spend the money and get a new one... faster, better everything with a warranty. I don't use it a whole lot anymore... I don't travel as much as I used to... but I need a reliable computer because I also use it as my backup for my desktop should it fail (being a 5-year old Dell running pretty much 24/7... that's a pretty good possibility!)
I did not want to spend any real money on a new laptop... me being me, I would have wound up with a $600 laptop instead of a $300 one, and I would be sleeping in the truck with it because I just spent almost $1K on a new desktop build... and SWMBO would pull out the rolling pin.
Sooooo... I turned to eBay!
Used Pentium M 770 @ 2.13GHz = $21.50
NIW WD Caviar Blue 160GB PATA HDD = $61.50
and from the 'egg...
2x 1GB DDR2 6400 RAM = $29.98
Total: $113... and a little bit of time. Swap the processor and clean things up a bit, a fresh install of XP on the new HDD, and, just today, stab in 2 sticks of RAM... what a DIFFERENCE! This thing flies now... well, as fast as a 6 year old single-core lappy can.
In hindsight I'm glad I decided to upgrade what I have, tearing apart the computer to install the processor was a bit daunting... but it wound up being fun and, more importantly, successful.
I queried folks here about upgrading and the consensus was to just spend the money and get a new one... faster, better everything with a warranty. I don't use it a whole lot anymore... I don't travel as much as I used to... but I need a reliable computer because I also use it as my backup for my desktop should it fail (being a 5-year old Dell running pretty much 24/7... that's a pretty good possibility!)
I did not want to spend any real money on a new laptop... me being me, I would have wound up with a $600 laptop instead of a $300 one, and I would be sleeping in the truck with it because I just spent almost $1K on a new desktop build... and SWMBO would pull out the rolling pin.
Sooooo... I turned to eBay!
Used Pentium M 770 @ 2.13GHz = $21.50
NIW WD Caviar Blue 160GB PATA HDD = $61.50
and from the 'egg...
2x 1GB DDR2 6400 RAM = $29.98
Total: $113... and a little bit of time. Swap the processor and clean things up a bit, a fresh install of XP on the new HDD, and, just today, stab in 2 sticks of RAM... what a DIFFERENCE! This thing flies now... well, as fast as a 6 year old single-core lappy can.
In hindsight I'm glad I decided to upgrade what I have, tearing apart the computer to install the processor was a bit daunting... but it wound up being fun and, more importantly, successful.
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