Upgrading a Dell Inspiron 1720

My girlfriend bought this laptop in 2007. At the time, it was a very good laptop with nice features. Needless to say that 8 years later it's old and lacks power and memory. After reading a lot on the web about upgrading that laptop, I decided to give it a new life.

Original specs were as followed :
- CPU : Intel Core 2 Duo T7100, 1.8GHz, 800 MHz FSB
- GPU : NVidia GeForce 8600M GT, 256Mb
- RAM : 2Gb (2x1Gb) PC5300-333Mhz
- HD : 250Gb 5400RPM
- BIOS version : A02
- OS : Windows Vista 32bits

I started a few months ago with the easiest upgrade : RAM! Went from 2Gb to 4Mb! Much better already, no more swapping on the HD! But that was far from enough! The computer was still slow. Can't watch online streaming on Netflix for example because it lags too much, even at lower resolutions. Same thing on YouTube! WiFi connection would often take several minutes before you could finally browse the Internet. So, after much reading, I decided to go for the CPU upgrade! The T9500 seems to be the most powerfull CPU that the motherboard can handle, so T9500 is was! I found a used one for 85$ (with a 3 months guarantee). By the time I received the CPU in the mail, I had updated many drivers and the BIOS to A09. Got the CPU and installed it. Wow! Big difference! Everything is much faster! I can now watch anything I want on Netflix and it streams wonderfully with no lag! WiFi connections to the router is so much faster now! Only a few seconds!

Next upgrade : The HD! Bought 2 7200RPM HD with 500Gb each. I had to buy a second HD caddy to install the 2nd HD.
Once the new HDs were in, I restarted the computer with the Windows 7 Ultimate 64bits SP1 DVD in it and proceeded with a clean install of the OS. It went even better than expected! Everything went smoothly! Windows installed itself with very little intervention. Once installed it proceeded with the Windows updates, There were 189 updates windows needed to make. It was around 10 PM, so I let it run all night. Once they were all installed, it found a few more. Amongst them, the NVidia drivers! Don't try those on the Dell.com web site, they won't install on Win7. Then there were about 48 more optional updates to be made, So 24 hours later, the Dell Inspiron is up and running. It is running very smoothly. The only driver that Windows did not install was the Ricoh multimedia card driver. I had to look for it on the web (unfortunately, I don't remember where I got it from).

The upgrades were really worth doing and really gave that laptop a new life. It's is so much faster than it was. It's not as fast and powerful as my Acer Aspire 5552G-5828, but it not that far behind anymore. I can now stream video content from YouTube or Netflix! It does have a nice 17" display, better speakers and the WiFi adapter is ac capable (mine is not)! And this laptop now has 1Tb of disk space! Should be quite enough for a while! All that's left to do now is install software.

New specs:
- CPU : Intel Core 2 Duo T9500, 2.6GHz, 800 MHz FSB
- GPU : NVidia GeForce 8600M GT, 256Mb
- RAM : 4Gb (2x2Gb) PC5300-333Mhz
- HD : 2 x Seagate Laptop thin 500Gb 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 32Mb cache
- BIOS version : A09
- OS : Windows 7 64bits

I'm very happy with the results!!

 

Nice upgrades! It's amazing how effective the 1720/1520 can be for an 8-year-old laptop after a few upgrades. You aren't even maxed out, either. Although 4 GB probably will be enough for average use, I know the 1520 and 1720 can handle 6 GB of RAM, and I believe the 1720 (only) can handle 8 GB, though I'd check that before buying that much. An SSD would also be faster than the two 500 GB HDDs, although those will certainly be a good amount faster than the original. I'm curious as to the reason for the 2x500 GB, rather than 1x1 TB, or perhaps 1x750 + a 256 GB SSD. I'd reckon the SSD + HDD would be the sweet spot of performance and capacity, though at a higher cost, whereas a single 1 TB drive would be cheaper than two 500's - unless of course there was already a 500 GB drive laying around. In which case, that would be the cheapest way to get 1 TB of reasonably fast drive space. I'm currently debating 1 TB HDD vs. smaller SSD for my laptops myself - though as I don't have two drive bays, it's more limited.

I'm also curious about the WiFi, since you mentioned being AC capable. AC didn't exist when the laptop was made (it was G by default, N for extra money), so I reckon that's an upgrade, too? If so you'll be the second person I know of on this forum to upgrade a 1520/1720 to Wireless AC.

189 updates for Win7 is a lot. I believe that puts Win7 SP1 ahead of XP SP3 in terms of number of updates on a fresh install (last I checked, it was about 151 for XP SP3). It's probably higher since it would also include bug and performance improvements, whereas XP SP3's patches would be almost exclusively security.

My guess would be an old Windows install also was contributing to some of the slowness before - several minutes to connect to WiFi on the T7100 seems really slow. Proportionally, after all, the T9500 is only 45-50% faster - so an order of magnitude is much more than expected.

Nice job with the upgrades! It's good to see another old-time laptop still in action!