worth doing major upgrading to my laptop?

[Mik3y]

i was thinkin about upgradign it to a 7200rpm harddrive (dont care about the power it uses or battery life) and 2x dvd+/-rw drive. do u think it worht the $300 upgrade? i'm already getting 512 more ram for graduation.

 

[AtTheGates]

If you don't care about battery life then I assume you use this mostly at home. If that is the case then I would get usb2 or firewire external enclosure for the dvdr. Enclosure is about $30 and a good drive is about $70. Save a little money and get better quality. If your load times are bothering you then get the hd as well.

 

[Connoisseur]

Err... i'd just get the 512 upgrade and stop there. Judging from your graphics and the rest of the specs of the laptop, i'm guessing it isn't for gaming. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you're probably using it for homework/projects, internet, music, movies,programming and maybe some very light gaming (old RTS games etc.) For these purposes, I personally don't believe a faster hard drive is worth the extra $200 in cost. Sure, it'll open up programs and boot up windows a bit faster, but you won't notice an amazing difference when running Office, or IE or C++. If anything, the extra ram will help because the program is loaded into main memory which is much faster anyway. However, if you are doing such activities as encoding or dvd/cd ripping then the extra speed on the HD will def. make a significant difference. The dvd-r/rw drive is a good idea if you want to copy dvd's but a 2.4 drive is pretty slow. will take you a while to burn a single dvd.

In summary, determine what you use your computer for. Personally, I would only get the 512 ram upgrade and save the rest for something really worthwhile (new desktop, new laptop, new car, new shiny thing). Otherwise, if you really do notice the slow speed of the hard drive and/or absolutely need a dvd burner now, then go for it.

 

[imported_Phil]

^ You speak the truth

An external DVD-RW drive might be a better idea, considering how often you "need" to burn a DVD on the move...?

Oh, and 2x DVD-RW is pretty slow nowadays. 4x or 8x really is a must unless you enjoy waiting a lot.