Any upgrade possible?

Latitude D810: 90g hard drive (85% free space), 1g RAM, 1.86Ghz, running XP Pro 2002. Anything I could do to upgrade?
Thanks. Johnny R

 

Looking at official Dell documentation, I can tell you the following (source - Powered by Google Docs)

Your Ram type is DDR2 400mhz or 533mhz. Either type will work. Looking on newegg for DDR533 RAM, typical prices for a 2GB kit (2 sticks of 1GB each) the cost will be about 40$ before shipping. (Newegg.com - Computer Hardware,Memory,Laptop Memory,DDR2 533 (PC2 4200))

Your CPU is quite out of date and finding a replacement chip might not do much, if anything. You will have great difficulty finding a new one.

Your laptop *might* support SATA hard drives. These are still the standard for hard drives and possibly a 500GB hard drive could be put in. But I would like to point out that this will do very little for your overall speed if you stay at these current specs.

My recommendation is that any money spent on this machine is money down the drain. It is quite outdated and is best left alone. Whatever money you would've spent on upgrades please consider putting aside towards a new laptop at a later date

 

Win7 may run better on it than Win XP, if you can find Win7 drivers for your devices. Otherwise, probably not worth investing more than your time and spare parts on it to retain some portable utility.

GK

 

Yes friends, my machine is dated. Got it in 2004 or 2005. It's made me a lot of money though. I just installed a new battery and fan. Thought perhaps I could beef it up, but I'll just leave it as is. Don't laugh, it's paid for and still making me money!
Johnny R

 

Windows 7 should be fine on it once you upgrade to 2GB RAM, I had Windows 7 on my M70 (Precision equivalent of the D810) and it was blazing fast. The laptop doesn't support SATA drives, but you don't seem to be short on disk space, so I would leave the HDD alone.

 

I have Win7 on a 2.4GHz P4 desktop with 768MB RAM. Runs better than XP. 1GB may be enough for the life of the laptop.

GK

 

If you are intent upon keeping the machine and improving upon its current performance, the RAM and hard drive are probably the best upgrades. Adding 1 gig of RAM will help in heavier multi-tasking, and a faster hard drive can improve application launch times and make a machine feel snappier. A fresh install of XP also helps.

The Samsung HM160HC is a nice and quick PATA hard drive. I used it in my old Inspiron 8600, and it was an excellent upgrade over the stock 40 GB Fujitsu. The Inspiron is still in service today, albeit not for me.

 

Is that Windows 7 Home Premium or Pro?

 

Win7 Pro x86

GK

 

If you do decide to put Windows 7 on there, the 1GB should be pretty good. I was running 1GB on my Latitude for some time before needing the extra RAM.