Should I upgrade?

I am thinking about upgrading my computer while I wait for a complete new laptop. In May, I plan to buy a complete new system, but with some of my new Christmas toys, I am having trouble. The main problem right now is recording video on my TV tuner. I don’t think my computer is processing it, because I can watch just fine.

Right now, I have an HP Pavilion zt3010us, with a 1.5GHz processor, WXGA screen, 2GB of PC2700 RAM, an 80 GB 7200 RPM HDD, 802.11B wireless, and the rest of the standard features for this series.

Here’s the question: should I buy a shell of a computer and move parts and wait until prices go down, should I buy new parts to put in mine for now (like a processor), or should I just wait on the whole thing?

I have about $1400-$1600 to spend now, enough for everything but a full computer (which I would wait on to do anyway). I want to upgrade to a new Core Duo processor, and all of the parts that go with the Yonah processor (faster RAM, wireless, chipset). How would a new Yonah processor end up working in my system (mine has a 400 MHz bus)? I really like the Asus Z70va, is there something similar running the new Yonah setup, or how it work with the Yonah processor, since I can pick one of those up for around $800-$900? What are people’s though on this?


Thanks

 

The laptop you have now is very decent, actually pretty impressive, I would hold on to her and wait for Dual-Core to become mainstream and inexpsensive.

 

I have had it for two years, don't get me wrong, I love this laptop, but she has had better days. The screen is definitely starting to go, and I think there is something goofy going on with my graphics card. Plus, I just put a brand new top of the line hard drive in it, and I have two gigs of RAM, but she just doesn't run as fast as she should. Plus, I am going to upgrade in May, and if the new processor would work and yield decent results in this one, but be fully compatible in the next one, I would definitly want to get the processor soon, and maybe pack a little punch into this computer.

 

I would say just wait for the whole thing since what you are trying to accomplish(upgrading it to a Yonah) is quite impossible. Even though CoreDuo/Solo share the same pin numbers, the actual layout has changed so they wont work with older chipsets and sockets. I am guessing by your specs that you have a banias Pentium M(1.5GHz,1B L2). If so then you can most probably uograde to a higher grade banias Pentium M. Upgrading to a Dothan Pentium M(with 2mb L2) would only be possible if the BIOS is able to support it.