Upgrading an old Dell

I have a six-yr old Dell Inspiron 6000. It takes forever to boot up and is slow loading photos, ads etc on the web. I think there are some background updating programs that slow things down too.

I don't need a new state-of-the art laptop, as all I do on it is remote e-mail, web surfing and some word processing.

I'd love to spend $150 or less to get it moving appreciably faster. First thought was to max out the memory - go from 1mb PC2-5300 DDR2 RAM to 2mb PC2-6400. Second was to get a video card with more memory, to replace the Radeon X300-64mb card. But I'm not sure which would help more. And I have no idea what card would work in the existing slot.

Any thoughts? Suggestions? The machine runs XP Pro 5.1 on Pentium M 1.73.

Thanks!

Reid

 

If it's PATA upgrade the harddisk to a Samsung HM160HC. Upgrading to 2 gb ram is also a good idea. Do a fresh installation of Windows. Or you could try a lightweight linux.

 

Inspiron 6000 has soldered graphics, there is no upgrading it. Your best bet is to upgrade the hard drive, XP runs fine with 1 GB RAM, though can't go wrong with more memory, considering DDR2 isn't horribly expensive. I upgraded my Latitude D600 (older 855PM laptop) to that Samsung HM160HC, world of difference, from 2 minutes to a usable desktop to like 30 seconds.

 

I think you need sold this old one and buy a new one with modern hardware

 

$150? You can get a great machine for that much with a core 2 duo and a decent dedicated graphics card.

Your computer was good 7 years ago. Now though the pentium m being a great mobile cpu won't be able to handle flash content. You can get netbook type apu system with amd c50 or amd e350 that will be considerably faster overall and have great battery life and be portable even with 15.6 inch version if you want big screen.

 

not worth upgrade. get a new one.

 

Don't upgrade this! I think the worst barebones on newegg would run circles around this one for under 200

 

Here part if you haven't told us but we need to know that units Service Tag to get a better idea of the dell and its components to know what to tell you can and can't expand on. So if you could not to late tell us the "Service Tag" number?

 

Thanks all.

tsunade: pretty sure the video card is replaceable. . .with something

SERVICE TAG - GD4NW81

 

Why do you even want to upgrade the video card? It would only matter for gaming.

 

Gaming or not the dell site from what it shows does indicate the card can be swapped out for another card whether to game or not is up to the OP. And possibly you might be able to do some more searching and could upgrade your CPU if it doesn't cost to much and then buy the CPU from ebay and upgrade that if you want to. Sometimes a upgraded GPU helps reduce CPU load.

 

I did locate the info and here it is:

Documentation

It does indicate the GPU can be removed as to which upgrade or updated card you can use you might have to contact Dell to find out for sure. But it does seem for this old of a laptop you are able to take out the GPU.

Service manual location:
Documentation

 

Once your getting into a machine that old spending anything over 150$ with all the Fusion Laptops at 250-300$ now is just too much IMO. Honestly even using used parts upgrading my Old dell in my signature i spent more then i wanted to.

 

Thanks again.
Looks like my options are (to-date):

A - Fully populate the memory slots with 2mb of new DDR2 memory + replace the HD with a Samsung HM160HC (or something like it.) Cost = $100

B - Get a new refurb/off lease laptop at TigerDirect/newegg. Cost=$250-300 (Have not found any $200 boxes as yet. And some of the reviews on the lowend refurbs at newegg are not terribly encouraging.)

C - Add to A a faster Pentium chip if it is $50 or less. Cost = $150

CPU and video do not share memory in this box, so not sure if any video mod is worthwhile.

Again, thanks for your suggestions. Will look for any last thoughts and make my move next weekend!

 

any current low end notebooks is far better then your current notebook with an upgrade.

 

Before you buy a new laptop, try re-installing the operating system. That should clean it up and make it a good bit faster.

Sent from my SGH-T989 using Tapatalk 2

 

Some of the older Dell's did feature modular graphics BUT it was done to help with serviceability rather than upgradeability. Dell used a proprietary format (not MXM!) for their laptops -- the only available upgrade options would be cards that were originally sold with the laptop. Considering your laptop was never sold with anything but non-upgradeable Intel graphics OR the X300 you have now there are zero options for upgrading your GPU. My guess is that your graphics are indeed soldered on but in any event it is a non-issue.

Upgrading the RAM to 2GB DDR2 certainly wouldn't hurt. Last I checked (please correct me if I am wrong) that laptop did NOT use SATA hard drives so your upgrade options there will be VERY limited and probably not cost effective. The only drive upgrade you might want to consider is a low-cost PATA SSD.

Realistically for a laptop this old there won't be much you can do. You might want to seriously consider selling the laptop for a little bit, toss that $150 in, and buy a new laptop.