What can i do to my Toshiba L305-s5955

first off im going to apologise for being a laptop / box computer noob. ive always had desktops ive built myself (pre sata hdd generation).

i just received this Toshiba Satellite L305-s5955 as a gift (im greatful for it) but it just seems slow and inadequate even for small tasks. so im wondering what possible upgrades i can make to it are.

i understand theres the most basic of upping the ram to 4gb but it has 32bit vista and im wondering if i got 64bit how hard it would be to make all the origenal (extra) buttons and such to work. also wondering is there a jumper pin or bios cap limiting the ram to 4gb ive ran across this on desktops where the motherboard manufacter says 8gb max but there is something else limiting it. the spec says its sata 1.5 hdd could i use a sata 3 hdd. i am also wondering if there is any way i could rip this thing apart and replace the cpu and if so what my options are.

another thing is that i ran cpu-z to try to figure out the p/n for the motherboard and i cant figure it out from the info it gave me back:
Northbridge Intel GL40 rev. 07
Southbridge Intel 82801IM (ICH9-M) rev. 03
LPCIO NS

sorry again for my lack of knowledge and grammar skills and thanks in advance for any help or info.

 

cpu = yes. socket P with fsb 800MHz, T8100/T8300/T9300/T9500 is good choice.
hdd = yes. I bet it's the current hdd that is 1.5Gbps
RAM = yes. Put 4GB but maybe the OS only sees 3-3.5GB. You can try to use eboostr 4 to make use of the unread memory.

Edit: c'mon, no apologize needed. we all start from 0, learning is good

 

thank you for the info.

couple more questions

is there i big difference if i get a hdd with 7200rpm compared to 5400rpm? and is there any brands/models i should avoid?

is there a way to get an exact manufacturer and p/n for the motherboard?

 

yes, you'll feel a boost in performance from 7200rpm drive (opening application, copying files, etc)
I recommend you to get Hitachi 7K500 or Western Digital 7200rpm drive.

You can try cpuz for the motherboard's p/n

 

The two things conspiring to make your system slow are probably the slower hard drive and the massive amount of bloatware manufacturers put on their machines. If you able to upgrade to a faster hard drive and are able to do a clean install, those are much more likely to seem faster than upgrading to 64 bit or 4GB of memory. 2GB is plenty for Vista.

 

i ran cup-z and it gives me cr*p is there another program or something i can try?

im looking into the HITACHI Travelstar HD20500 IDK/7K 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB with the new info you gave me what do you think of it?
i had bad luck with WD in my desktops

thanks ZaZ but if i do a clean install how hard will it be to get the buttons and such to work?

would vista business work ok on my comp? i have a friend that bought it and was going to start a small business but things fell through and he said hed sell it to me for $55 its never been used.
if i do get a 64bit version how much trouble will i have getting programs and drivers to work?

 

i have to let my friend know by noon today if i want the vista business or hes going to sell it to someone else id really appreciate some insite on that

 

well i got vista business 32bit from my friend and did a clean install on my computer with no other mods and its a lot faster already (thanks ZaZ)

now to figure out what i want to do next

 

The bottleneck on that system is the Celeron 900 cpu that it shipped with. Nothing you do short of replacing that will ever give you a significant enough performance boost IMHO.

 

The Celeron 900 is a 2.2GHz Core 2 architecture. It won't bottleneck normal usage.

Quoted for truth.

 

id like to upgrade this single core celeron 900 to a core 2 (T8100/T8300/T9300/T9500) but the prices are crazy. but so far with just installing a clean vista on it its running so much faster

 

I just upgraded to that drive a week or two ago. I'm very happy with it and is nice to have the extra capacity compared to the one it replaced. It is also quite popular on the forums here. tigerDirect has probably the best price at the moment...

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=5509442&CatId=2682

I paid $89 USD a couple weeks ago on Amazon but it's back up to $109 now.

 

im really wanting the 7K but im flat broke again (my car droke down 2 weekends in a row) so it looks like upgrades will have to wait for the future.