Kiss of life for the M1530

I had a grand plan to get myself a Macbook Pro for music production purposes. For one reason or another, I am back to my old m1530 and looking to spend ... well, not a lot.

So can I give this thing a boost, is it actually worth it?

At the moment it is horrifically slow, the HDD churning for its very life. With the processor being pretty much out of the window to upgrade (it was the decent T7### series though), I am looking at what I can do:

Ram upgrade
SSD

These seem like the logical choice. But before I splash the cash, will this really help the system? Has anyone done this and reaped the benefits?

If so, seems like a decent investment... plus I can look into getting a hi-res screen to replace my dark and fading one. Plus a new battery.

 

Hi Widge,

XPS M1530 can support up to 4GB 667 MHz SoDIMM DDR2 RAM and supports SSD at the speed of SATA I. This upgrade would not provide a significant increase in performance. However, the system would be faster than the current configuration. You can replace the screen and the battery, if you are satisfied with the system performance after the upgrade.

 

Hmm. It may be as well just doing the RAM and looking into a 7200rpm HDD, more cost effective for the benefit. I think I am on 5400rpm.

Thanks for getting back to me!

 

Few months ago i bought cheapest 60gb ssd on the market for my nc8430 it also had sata1 - performance increase was big. Even at sata 1 speeds you cant compare 2.5" 5400 hard drives with an ssd. My advice would be to get hdd caddy from ebay and put his current hdd in it and get ssd for windows and few programs. Also if you can get 2x2gb of ddr2 667 memory.

 

I'm going to second buying an SSD unless you specifically know that you are RAM or CPU limited.

The M1530 is also supports SATA 3gb/s, not just SATA 1.5gb/s. It won't make a huge different either way; you should still buy an SSD.

 

Hi Widge,

Thank you for your reply. I suggest you to puchase a SSD if you need performance or a 7200 RPM HDD if the upgrade needs to be cost effective.

 

I have my M1530 upgraded to 8GB ram and 128GB SSD. It works great. Feels like a new laptop.

 

Skip the 7200rpm drives, go straight for an SSD. Depending on your data needs you can get into a 120GB drive for around $80. The performance boost will be very noticeable.

Seems like Samsung and Intel are the top performers. I've had terrible luck with OCZ, stay away from them no matter how cheap you find them.