upgrading old laptop

Hi guys, can I successfully upgrade an old laptop so that it will run well and not be too costly to upgrade either? So slow at present....lol.
Laptop is :
acer travelmate 4502WLMi running xpsp3

Was thinking that probably the only upgrades worth considering were ram and hdd.
If this is the case what size mem and spec will work?
If the hdd is worth upgrading do I go for internal or external? and what size ?
Any other info also worth adding.
thanks
r

 

Hi reptile1, and welcome to the forums!
The TravelMate 4502WLMi is a bit of an old machine - first-gen Centrino by the looks of it. The upgrades we suggest will probably not make it faster than a new machine, so keep that in mind.

Your machine uses DDR SODIMM memory at PC-2700/DDR-333 speeds, and can have a maximum of 2GB of RAM installed. Go ahead and max it out; Windows loves more RAM.
As for the hard drive, your system uses the PATA interface and 2.5" drives. That means that most of the biggest and fastest hard drives are ruled out (they use the SATA interface). That being said, there are some particularly spiffy options out there, like the Samsung HM160HC, deemed here on NBR to be the fastest hard drive for PATA available. Worth a look into.

External hard drives wouldn't make a large difference in your computer's performance, only how much you could store on it.

 

Hi TehSuigi,
thanks for the info here are the details of the laptop.

Intel Pentium M725 (1.6GHz, 400MHz FSB, 2MB L2 cache)
60GB hdd
512 MB ddr

Realy wanted to know if it was worth spending on to increase performance and how much increase in performance could reasonably be expected.
Guess it probably isnt worth changing the cpu?

Let me know what you think
r

 

Well, going from 512MB to 2GB is a large improvement. You'll be able to multitask a lot better, and should even see a general improvement in peformance since Windows won't have to continually page data to the hard drive due to a lack of RAM.

You certainly could upgrade the CPU, but you need one with a Pentium M with a 400 MHz FSB, since your motherboard can't handle a 533 MHz one. You can go to a 1.8, 1.9, 2.0, or 2.1 GHz CPU, with increasing cost every step of the way. It'd only really help in CPU-intensive tasks such as video encoding, though.

 

Hi TehSuigi ,
Is there a heat issue with upgrading cpu on this machine?
Also if I upgrade the hdd then I lose my recovery partition....the recovery xp professional disks (that are supplied) might not work then!
So it looks like I can only get an upgrade of RAM which I guess is going to cost roughly £35 per Gb.
Thought of getting a second hand cpu but if heat could be a problem then I may make it worse...lol
Let me know what you think
r

 

Nope, heat actually will NOT be a problem!
All Pentium Ms on the 400 MHz FSB are designed to operate within the same 21 W thermal envelope; it's the 533 MHz FSB models that operate hotter.
Stick with a Pentium M 7x5 model and you should be fine - to get a decent enough performance boost, aim for the 2.0 GHz 755 or 2.1 GHz 765 model.

And true, swapping hard drives means losing your recovery partition - but it certainly gives you an incentive to get a good backup going!