UPgrade Presario 1500 Compaq, Harddrive,Ram,DVDburner

I have an old Presario Compaq

P4 2.4
512RAM
40GB

NOw ii want to upgrade this thing.
Some one please help me with which type of RAM should i buy ?
Which kind of Hard drive would fit in there 80Gb or 100 Gb(if available)?
And which kind of DVd burner should i buy?
thanks
Please give me some links so i can look at the price.

 

According to www.Crucial.com the ram used in the Presario 1500 notebook is a 200-pin SODIMM DDR memory module.

http://www.crucial.com/store/listpa...tabid=CR&model=Presario+1500+Series&submit=Go

You should be able to goto Crucial and find the exact ram size you need. The link above will take you to the 512MB module for your unit.

There shouldn't be any problems upgrading to a larger HDD, especially since your notebook has a 40GB drive in it. You should be able to use a HDD upto 100GB, but I'd stick with 80GB for now because the BIOS may not support it.

The DVD Burner (if you want internal) can be purchased in a variety of shops. Check www.UltraDrives.com and see what they have for your unit. This will be a direct swap with the drive that is already in the unit. You'll have to open the unit in order to swap. Just send UltraDrives an email and they'll tell you what drives will fit your unit. Also, you'll need a face plate to match the color of your unit. Or, if you want an external, pretty much anything that is USB or firewire should do fine. I like the Pioneer or Plextor brands, they seem to be the best from what I've seen. Just make sure you have USB 2.0 ports as the old USB 1.0 ports may not perform fast enough for an external DVD burner.

Good luck!

-Vb-

 

If you can swing it, the Hitachi 7k60 is the best notebook hard drive in my opinion. They are expensive right now. It only comes in 40 and 60GB sizes. They are supposed to be coming out with the 7k100 which will come in 60, 80, and 100GB sizes. Dell has them right now for their notebooks. Unsure when they’ll be available to everyone else. You could take your old drive and put it in an external case for extra storage.

If you want an internal drive, I would recommend the NEC 6650 available on NewEgg’s site for $99. The burn quality on the NEC is the best I have seen. Laptop drives are not as good as desktop drives and there are crappy ones out there. You can drop UltraDrives.com a line as VB suggested, but I don’t believe they carry any NECs. I upgraded a combo drive on Presario a while back with the NEC 5500 which was their 4x burner. Sometimes fit and firmware can be issues.

If you want an external, buying a drive and case is probably the cheapest route. The also sell lots of them on eBay. I would recommend firewire over usb if you have it. Sometimes the usb chips can be flakey. I have heard very good things about the BenQ DW1640. I have their slightly older DW1620 in my desktop. It does very good burns especially with DVD+R media which is mostly what I use. BenQs can be bitset. It marks the disc so your DVD player sees it as a DVD-ROM which makes it nearly 100% compatible. Pioneers only do this on dual layer media. Plextors tend to be more expensive. They do have a more inexpensive lineup, but those are rebadged BenQs. Good Luck.