Should I get rid of my 6860FX, or upgrade it?

OK, here’s my situation. I bought a P-6860FX about three years ago. It’s been a decent computer, although I’ve always hated how hot it gets (especially in the lower right hand corner where my right palm rests) and I haven’t been able to find a good graphics driver for Windows 7 (does one exist that works well?). I’m now at the point where I have to decide whether to upgrade, or sell and buy a new computer.

My battery is completely dead, so I would have to buy a new one. A new battery from Gateway costs $97.18 shipped: Gateway Official Site: Shop - Accessories: Accessory Details.

I’ve never really been happy with the stock processor, and now that I’m using some CPU intensive programs for school it’s going to be necessary to have a faster CPU. From what I’ve read on the forum, it seems like the Intel t9300 is the most popular choice for a processor upgrade. These sell on ebay for about $115.

So, do you think the 6860FX is worth the ~$220 repairs and upgrade, or should I go and buy a new computer? Can I get a new computer better than this with a ~$1,000 budget?

Appreciate your advice

 

"CPU intensive programs for school"

That line clinches it.

My advice is: get the battery to make the laptop functional again to give you a secondary machine, and sink the rest of the money you have left into a desktop with a far more recent CPU. If the programs you're running are multithreaded, you'll be gimping yourself running on a laptop using yesterday's technology which is further hobbled by being dual-core when you can get 4 and/or 6 core processors inexpensively (if you count AMD for the latter).

If these said programs are vital to your course of study, it's best to run them primarily on a desktop simply because if/when things go WRONG with a desktop, it's easier to troubleshoot and/or swap out dead/dying components than a ~4 year old laptop. I still love my 7811FX, but the last upgrade I bought and WILL buy for this thing is an SSD.

 

Hey, thanks for your reply!

Well, I didn’t mean that I’m going to be calculating the meaning of life or anything I should have been more clear, but by “CPU intensive” I meant I’m going to be using some engineering programs, such as MATLAB, Multisim and Autodesk Inventor, in addition to Photoshop, some video editing programs, and casual gaming (among other things..).

Unfortunately a desktop really isn’t an option, because I have to have my computer in some of my class labs. So, it’s got to be a laptop.

Would the 6860FX (with the processor upgraded) be semi-comparable to a new $800 - $1,000 laptop, today? Or should I save the $200, sell my 6860FX for a few hundred, and add a little more to that to get something new, like a Sager NP5160 (seems popular..)?

 

I'm on the same boat although I'm thinking of going to a MBP.

eBay sells OEM 6 cell batteries, not the original 9 cell ones, that should also fit our P-68xx FX notebooks for only $25 plus shipping. A T8100 is only around $80 now so that would be a big improvement too.

I still think these laptops have life in them as the GPU is still strong and you can still get decent speed C2D's installed.

 

If the battery is dead, it's unlikely you'll be able to sell your 6860 for "a few hundred," to be honest.

If you can upgrade the laptop for 300 bucks, just hang onto the remainder of that cash (and add onto it) and wait for the deals at Christmas.

 

Really? I've been watching ebay for the past few weeks and have seen several sell for over $200 for "parts" (i.e. broken); one sold for almost $400 and another for $600. Maybe those guys just got lucky, though..

 

I upgraded my CPU to the T8300 just a week ago, for $45... money well spent. What programs are you talking about?

 

I would not bother with upgrades on this comp. Clean it up and it should work fine with the apps that you mentioned above and save up some money for a replacement eventually. I agree with DestruyaX that the best you can get out of this by selling it is probably low to mid $300 - in average.

cheers ...

 

What's your "Windows Experience Index" after upgrading?

MATLAB, Multisim, programming IDE's, Photoshop, Autodesk Inventor, gaming, etc..

If I keep it (even for a short time) I have to get a new battery, and really also need to upgrade the processor (it's unbearably slow sometimes..)

I don't know.. I'm kind of torn on what to do. I got all excited over the past few days lookers at the Sagers at Xoticpc - until I realized that 15.6" is just going to be too darn small for me and a 17.3" will cost about $1,600 - $1,800, which really is just too much for me..

 

The 1920x1080 display for the Sager 15" notebooks should help alleviate that "small" feeling. The denser packing of the pixels on that "smaller" display should feel crisper than a 17", too.

 

I say, for the $300 upgrade(t9300, 64 gb SSD, and battery), thats the best deal. Hang on this this and put windows on it and then partition and with some Linux distro. This can be a back up to your new laptop when you get one.
I have 4. The oldest one is the MX6920 which crapped the HDD about 2 years ago, and I didn't at the time want to deal with reinstalling win Xp just to flash the bios so I could upgrade to win 7. So it sat, until about a month ago when I realized I had an extra HDD, so I popped in win XP and brought it up to SP2. Before continuing on to SP3 and drivers for everything I thought "hey, Linux, I'll give you a shot." So I installed Ubuntu 11.04 (w/ dual boot)and its significantly faster than anything that ran on this lappy before and the laptop connect card connects way faster with better signal than it ever did on my Win 7 starter LT2104u. It also only uses about 350 megs of ram when in use and has that slick Unity UI. I never had to install drivers or go find something to get something to work other than DVD plaver. I downloaded the program needed to read copy protected DVD's and now good to go. This will be my new learning experience.
This has inspired me to install as dual boot on my LT2104u (probably Kubuntu).
Point is keep it for a back up lappy, and do your testing/ learning on it of things you wouldn't do to your new lappy. Good luck in your decision.

 

Get rid of it while you still can. I suspect it still has decent value for parts. In fact I'd give you $50 for just the motherboard as my 6860fx wont post anymore and I need to recover data from the RAID'ed drives I had in it. You probably wont get $300 for the whole thing, but I think $400 is a better estimate for the upgrades you are proposing.

The limiting factor on lifetime for the 6860fx is the GPU. In this forum alone, there have been an abundance of complaints about defective GPU's in this laptop (and this is what killed mine). The fact that you can't seem to find a decent video driver for yours (which normally shouldn't be an issue) is a red flag. I'd say you'd be lucky to get another year out of it before you experience the same problem.

For $700 you can get significantly more in a new computer than you would get by upgrading the 6860fx, and you would get it in a more portable form factor.

 

Really? Could you give some examples? The Sager 17" laptops I was looking at are around $1,500.

 

Take a look at the new Lenovo Ideapad Y-Series and HP Pavilion 4 and 6 series laptops. The Dell XPS15-L502X might also be a decent option.

 

What I would do. I would take my 6860 with me to school and if I needed more power with out like graphics I would use logmein.com to remote in the desktop I had at Home with a Quad cord 2.4 ghz .

So I would go with the New Desktop option and remote login service.