SONY vaio, NR110E What aftermarket upgrades do you advise?

I got a great deal on this laptop so I jumped on it. I would like to make it as efficient as I can and get the most bang for my buck without sinking alot more into it. It has 1 g ram, pentium dual-core processor (i was stupid thinking that was the latest not knowing all the names with dual in it.
Does anyone have a list of the Intel chips to say which order they were made so I will know old vs. new?

Any advice appreciated,

 

If you're running Vista, I suggest another 1GB of RAM for better performance. Refer to the Hot Ram Deals thread for the best prices.

Intel Duo Core(Yonah)
Speeds: http://www.intel.com/products/processor_number/chart/coreduo.htm

Intel Core 2 Duo(Napa), and currently Intel Core 2 Duo(Santa Rosa)
Speeds: http://www.intel.com/products/processor_number/chart/core2duo.htm)

Both Core 2 Duo's are 64 Bit, while the regular Duo Core is not.

Keep in mind, your processor is upgradeable to the Napa platform.

 

I agree with the above and say add ram. Adding ram is cheap, and offers the best boost in performance especially per dollar (and especially if vista as posted above). All processors today are basically good enough for most purposes and they cost a lot to upgrade. If i were to upgrade anything, i would say ram and possible a new graphics card, of course this all depends on what you want to do with this laptop.

 

Rarely can you upgrade a notebooks graphics card. And in the authors case they can't. Adding RAM, and a faster HD would be the best performance boosters. Your HD runs at 5400RPM, and that's already good enough for regular multitasking. I looked up your model and it looks like it comes with only 512MB of RAM so you definitely need to upgrade. Adding RAM is the one of the easiest upgrades to do, here is a good video guide if you're unsure: http://videos.howstuffworks.com/howstuffworks/49-how-to-add-ram-to-a-laptop-video.htm

 

Thank you for your replies. My NR110e has 1 g RaM that came with it and I ordered a 2 g kit for upgrade at crucial.com and will look for better deals today so if nec i can cancel. Speed is what I want i guess bc it is taking too long to load pages.....

 

Probably Vista with to little ram as others have said. You need at leat 2Gb for Vista to run something close to smooth.

 

Interestingly someone on here said in another thread that this model can go to 4 g becuase it has the 95 chipset...or something. Do you think going that high is worth the moneY? http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=197531

 

It all depends on what your doing with the notebook. According to newegg the Pentium dual-core model (thought it has a different model, I don't think there will be a difference) goes up to 2GB Max. The Santa Rosa C2D model however goes up to 4Gb according to Sonystyle.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834117606

http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs...10151&langId=-1&productId=8198552921665243979

For regular use (browsing the web, checking email, IMing, Office, and some very like SimCity 3000 type gaming which is what this notebook is meant for) 2Gb should be fine.

 

You cannot ulitize the full 4GB with your laptop(if any?) to use the full 4GB you need a 64-bit processor(which you have), a 64-Bit OS(unless you installed this yourself 32-Bit is standard) even with that Sony BIOS still limits it to 3.5GB. Like the user above said 2GB will be plenty for regular multitasking.

BTW Don't pay attention to Sony's limits, they listed the 400 and below SZ's can only accept 2GB, but were proven wrong.