First upgrades to my Compaq need advise.

Hey guys whats up haven't really been on these forums since i bought my laptop about 2 years ago

Right so i'm really starting to get sick of re installing windows every 4 months or so from my pc being to slow so i'm going to upgrade some parts.

I'm looking to increase my RAM and my HDD. I have about 120 dollars on my credit card handy could get more but kinda wanna stick to 120 if possible. I really just want my laptop to be quickier and more responsive, it really lags when i have a few things open at once.

Right so my laptop is a Compaq R4218ea here are the specs i can find on the RAM and HDD in it already.

Here's the full spec just incase....

What kind of RAM do i need does it have to be that specific type, will the following work?
"1gb laptop RAM SO DIMM DDR2 PC2-5300S"

And is it any HDD thats 2.5' that will work?

Thanks alot lads would be great if you could fine me some links or cheap places to buy parts i'm fairly new at this.

 

OK....
No DDR2 ram is not backwards compatible. Any ddr ram will be fine though,- if the speeds are not supported by your mobo, it will just downclock. Make sure the ram you get is for laptops, ie 200 pin. how many slots does your laptop have? as this will determine the capacities you need to buy.

Not all hds will work, only 2.5" IDE hard drives will work. They're slowly phasing out (especially the 7200rpm ones) so i'd get one fast. Considering your old mobo, it'll probably have a 137gb limit, however this can be solved by partitioning your hd.

search on ebay for these parts- they're selling for dirt cheap. You could also consider a cpu upgrade (as long as yours is not soldered).

 

put 2 x 1gig PC2700 or PC3200 RAM sticks in there

you'll be pleased with the results..

you can't use the cheaper DDR2 PC4200 or PC5300 unfortuanatlty

 

Well, if you want a Hitachi 60GB 7200rpm hard drive....PM me, I have it on sale..

 

not to beat down on the 7k100, but the fastest ata harddrive is the samsung hm160hc, it is able to maintain a transfer average of 52mb/sec. The 7k100 can only maintain a speed of 36mb/sec
The speed of your 4200rpm drive is closer to about 15mb/sec, so you will see a tremendous increase in speed.
The drive retails for about $75 shipped. I purchased my hm160hc from lagoom a little over a week ago, and it is amazingly fast. It really revived my system.

For the memory, you may have troubles upgrading since 1gb of pc2700/pc3200 retails for about $60-70.

If you can get a 1gb card from ebay, or newegg when their is a sale you could stay within your $120 price range.

Literally here were my laptops specs:
Dell inspiron 8500: 2.6Ghz P4m, 2gb corsair Pc3200, and a Hitachi 40gb 5400rpm drive.
I upgraded the harddrive, and it was like a whole new machine. The original drive was able to maintain a speed of 19mb/sec, and the new samsung drive was able to do 52mb/sec.
As you can see it is a huge jump in performance.
The bootup times decreased from 1:45 sec to 0:42 seconds with the same programs installed.
It is just an amazing drive and it will speed up your laptop.
I was shocked about how fast it was, it actually boots faster and seems snappied than the other expensive rigs in my system, and it is 6.5yrs old.

Get the samsung hdd and you will not go wrong.
A faster harddrive will be much more noticeable than upping the ram an extra Gb.

K-TRON

 

Can i just say firsts thanks alot for the replies i really didn't expect this many that quick and that detailed.
Ok so what i've learnt is i need DDR ram either PC3200 or PC2700 is the 3200 one faster?
Would this be suitable or a good buy looks very cheap too.
http://cgi.ebay.ie/SAMSUNG-2GB-2-x-...goryZ172QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

I've looked on ebay and i can't find that HDD your talking about k-tron there seems to be no 7200rpm samsung drives. Your results seem amazing more then a minute taken off the drive.

 

Thanks but i'm looking for something a bit bigger my current one is 60gb and it's full as it is.

 

the samsung hm160hc is a 160gb 5400rpm drive.
It has 160gb of data on one disk, so it has a very high data density, which means very high bandwidth.

Here is where I bought mine from:
http://www.lagoom.com/Samsung_Spinpoint_M5_160GB_2.5/HM160HC/partinfo-id-578898.html

I had it to my door in 4 days on ground shipping, which was pretty nice.

My friend, that memory is not compatible with your laptop. That is desktop memory and it will not fit.
You need ddr sodimm memory.
It is smaller and fits into laptops.
Here is what you are looking for :
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820220111

I thought it was a bit more expensive, so for $48 or so you can get it shipped to your address.
This memory can be combined with one of the memory cards in your system, giving you 1.25Gb of memory.

K-TRON