Update/Upgrade my old Alien

I would like to upgrade my MJ 12 7700 portable workstation with another hard drive, a better graphics card and I need a new battery. It currently has a AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual core 4200+ 2.20GHz, 2.00GB of RAM and a NVIDIA Quadro FX2500M Graphics card.

Will the processor work with windows 7? I know that I can put another 80Gig SATA HD in. Is there a card that will upgrade the graphics? How much memory can I add if any? Lastly, does anyone know where I can get a battery?

It would probably be cheaper to buy a new laptop, but this one has some sentimental value and it looks cool.
Any help would be great!

Mike

 

For sentimental value? I would clean re-install Windows XP on any newer HDD, update the drivers to the most current available and call it a day for this circa 2006 tech. Should be enough to browse the web and basic office productivity, but other than that even the $80 for the HDD I would install is probably money that is essentially 'wasted'.

See:
Seagate 500GB Laptop Thin SSHD, SATA w/ 64MB Cache at Memory Express


This platform is too old to be seriously upgraded. The cost may be small (I'm thinking ebay for parts, if they exist) but so will the performance increase. No matter what CPU or GPU combination you can put in it. (Sorry).


For example even an entry level system with a Pentium B980 processor has almost double the raw processing power than your current cpu.


See:
PassMark - Intel Pentium B980 @ 2.40GHz - Price performance comparison

See:
PassMark - AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4200+ - Price performance comparison


And will almost certainly be more performance than anything you can upgrade to.

While a system based on such a Pentium processor is worth ~$430, the 'catch' is that it is probably maxed out as is - and will not equal or exceed your current system in all (important) areas.


See:
Asus X55A-RH91-CA w/ Pentium B980, 4GB, 320GB, DVD+/-RW, 15.6in HD, Win 8 64-bit at Memory Express


A more worthwhile goal would be to get an i7 QC Ivy Bridge based notebook with discrete graphics and 6-8GB RAM for a few hundred more (I'm assuming you game).

Here is an example (on sale) for $900:

See:
Asus N56VJ-RH71-CA w/ Core i7-3630QM, 8GB, 750GB, DVD+/-RW, 15.6in FHD, GeForce GT 635M, Win 8 64-bit at Memory Express



Not only will you get ~8x the performance of your current system, but you also get the benefits of Windows 8 (soon to be upgraded to 8.1), a superior display (based strictly on resolution and hopefully also in display quality too), much more HDD capacity and Bluetooth capability - not to mention a warranty and that 'new system smell'.


See:
PassMark - Intel Core i7-3630QM @ 2.40GHz - Price performance comparison


Probably not what you want to hear - but upgrading older systems is hard to do effectively - upgrading an older notebook is even harder and falls much faster in the 'not worth it' camp after all is said and done, ime.


Good luck.

 

I generally agree with tilleroftheearth; you are quite limited as to what parts you can upgrade, and for the upgrade choices you do have, it will cost a lot while providing minimal improvements. Regarding getting a new battery, take a look at ebay, you can usually find appropriate batteries for your system (usually from Chinese sellers) for a fairly good price; over the years I've orderered around a dozen batteries for various laptops from Chinese sellers and haven't had any issues with any of them yet.

If the system is in good working condition and you just want to make a few changes to boost performance/usability, you should consider getting either a low cost SSD (generally you want vista or higher for SSDs) or a higher capacity (500GB or more) sata hard drive as they will both work with your computer, provide a decent boost during loading times and windows startup/shutdown as well as they can be taken out of the laptop later on when you retire the system and then reused in another system.

As far as the OS is concerned, I'd stick with whatever the laptop came with; personally I prefer Vista or higher since they are far more secure than XP and work better with newer technologies such as SSDs.

 

Thank you both for your in depth and candid answers. It was the only 'laptop' at the time (you are correct with 2006) that would drive a deck design CAD program I could take into a customers house and show them a project, and allow me to game as well. At the time with a 3 year guarantee it was +5K. I guess that's why I keep it. Also it looks really cool and it is an Alien before Dell.I will continue to look as I like to play Diablo 3 now and need a work laptop. I am leaning towards Lenovo as that was my old company laptop and it was very good.