What was your best notebook upgrade?

- Vista to Windows 7
- HDD to SSD
- HDD size bumps
- IE to Firefox to Chrome

Other than that, I haven't tweaked my laptops too much.

 

I really don't know what's wrong with the 5100 card... it works excellently for me and have no issues. I really don't know why so many ppl have issues..

lol.. chrome is a downgrade from firefox IMO.

 

FF is tremendously slow. Along with that, I don't use extensions, so FF isn't the browser for me.

 

well for me it is... I find it 100 times better than IE.

 

Rubbish broadband here - we're 2 miles from the nearest BT exchange; and we barely get 200 Mb/sec - I've often watched it drop below 50 Mb/sec...

I've found Opera's products fast and stable; especially when Turbo kicks in...

I'm using Opera 10.6 in my latest toy (spec is in my previous post on this thread). I used Opera 9.7 in my older HP Pavilion which expired.

 

Hopefully you meant Kb/s, otherwise, I am jealous and tempted to call you a whiner.

 

That'll be the one... :laugh:

 

Hd4570 -> GTS250m

 

On my 1st laptop, 1 GB to 3 GB RAM for Vista. Wow. Major diff.

Now I'd say SSD?

Oh and also T5750 to a T9800. T9800-> i7-820QM hasn't seen much difference in day-to-day life.
And I guess my 1080p screen. Wow, so much more space now.

 

1. Upgrade from dual floppies to 40MB HD! Wow, stuff loaded so much faster!

2. Upgrading from dial up to DSL.

 

lol that's pathetic.. I get 6Mb/s and i live 5-8 miles from the exchange...

lol its the opposite.. HD4570 <<<<< GTS250m

same here... 1GB to 4GB was major improvement.

 

1. Clean install Windows 7 OS with the following:
Windows 7 Services (Tweaked - mostly) - Windows 7 Service Configurations by Black Viper
EnhanceMySe7en (free version)
CCleaner (runs at startup and then shuts off)

2. 4GB Ram

3. SSD (hard drives are a major bottle neck, you could improve the performance of a much slower processor)

 

That was obviously an arrow. He upgraded to a GTS250M.

 

ok lol, sorry i sometimes don't get it too... not good at interpreting symbols.

 

But, but, but 4570 is bigger than 250.....

 

That is true. It would all be ridiculously confusing for someone who had no prior knowledge of how GPU naming works.

 

Hardware wies:

1) Switching to an mt40 from an mt30 turion in my old averatec 2155.
2) switching to a 7200rpm in the same averatec
3) upgrading to 2GB of ram in the same averatec

I always spec laptops the way I want minus ram speed from the OEM now to save the hassle.

Software wise:

1) switching from xp to vista in my dell vostro 1700 made a huge difference in just about every aspect of use. Granted my FPS didnt go up or down in games but everything else that came with the transition was a welcome sight.
2) switching from vista to 7 in my dell vostro 1700 and thinkpad t400. Slight increase in performance efficiency but a whole new plethora of tools and features (although I miss the cascade option to view open windows in vista).

I cannot think of any other switches that actually improved a current or old laptop. 3.11 to 95 created issues for me, 98 to ME was a nightmare, 98 to 2000 made the pc run a little slower as did 98 to xp.

 

and WHY on earth did you go from 98 to " Moron Edition"????? that was the second worse OS ever made ( no Vista was NOT the worst )!!!!

2KP was a good OS, yes was a lil slower than win98SE but well worth it.

 

The best upgrades I made to my notebooks were always RAM and hard drive. I have not changed any other component in any notebook I have owned.

2004-5: HP zv5000z went from Toshiba 40GB 4200RPM to WD 80GB 5400RPM, very nice results.
512MB -> 1GB; improved multi-tasking ability.

2005-06: Sager 15.4" went from Samsung 80GB 5400RPM to Hitachi 100GB 7200RPM; again, noticeable performance improvement.
1GB RAM -> 2GB RAM; almost eliminated stuttering in games.

2008-09: HP Pavilion dv5t went from Fujitsu 160GB 5400RPM to WD 500GB 5400RPM.
2GB RAM -> 4GB RAM smoothed out gaming performance.

2009-10: HP ProBook 5310m went from Seagate 320GB 7200.4 to Hitachi 7K500 500GB 7200RPM. Nice increase, the 7200.4 vibrated a lot and was not impressive for a 7200RPM drive. The 7K500 is far more refined.

--------

In general I don't stress the processor and have not upgraded one before. As a matter of fact, I think I would be fine today using the single-core Pentium M in my old Sager as long as I had a decent amount of RAM and a fast hard drive to go with it.

I have not pulled the trigger on an SSD yet, the prices are too high. $120 for 80GB would be tempting, unfortunately prices have not dropped to that level yet. However, based on my experience with SSDs, they would make an excellent upgrade for any computer.

 

Going from my Toshiba A300 to my Asus G73. Minds were blown.

Windows Vista to Windows 7, on both my desktop and my Toshiba laptop.

 

So far in my experiences, Vista has provided just as good experience as 7 - both much better than XP, 2K, 98, and 95.

 

yup vista after SP1 was not too bad at all, but as for BAD I am still stuck on the horrid Mac OS 9 from the mid 90's that caused me thousands of hours of work

 

If we can count old laptops to new ones then my acer 5920g with a t5250 @ 1.5 GHz, 8600m gt ddr2, 2 gb ram and a 160gb hdd to my current gateway was a nice improvement.

 

Before I bought the M17x and M15x, I've only got a desktop running XP with Pentium 4 processor @ 2.4GHz, a very old Radeon 9250, 512 MB of RAM as well as a 80GB of hard drive. So, I guess, this is one hell of an upgrade to me.

 

Getting an SSD provided me the most noticeable boost in performance. It was far more noticeable than any upgrade in CPU, OS or HDD.

 

well mine was quite similar except i had a P4 desktop at 3GHz and old Intergrated GMA... 9600M GT was a super upgrade..

 

As far as seeing the largest upgrade from computer to computer. That would have to be 1) Compaq presario with a P2 to Gateway 3018gz 2) Vostro 1700 to Studio XPS 16 and 3) acer 5672/averatec 2155 to dell vostro 1700.

I got a free copy and at the time it was new and I thought it would be cool. Boy was I wrong, I went back to 98 ASAP FYI.

Vista pre SP1 was OK after it was a great OS IMHO as well. I never had any issues and ran things just as well or better then on xp on the same hardware.

 

Not a notebook upgrade, but going from a 17" 1024x768@60hz CRT to a 1600x1200 19" LCD was by FARR the best upgrade I ever did.

It was like a new world!

Also going from a bad 33.6kbs (max my 56k line ever achieved) to a 2mBit ADSL connection was blazingly fast. I used to start large file downloads just to marvel at the eta

Going from a 'standard' MS mouse to a Logitech gaming mouse was a great leap, too - really makes the whole experience feel better.

XP --> Vista / 7 was a great upgrade for me too .. neither Vista nor 7 have ever done a BSOD on me, in 3 1/2 years of use.

RAM ... meh. It's something I always upgrade but never *really* feel the need for. Sure, it stops Windows hitting the paging file (so rapid task switching) but it's actual computational power stays about level.

A 5200RPM HDD with a max read/write of about 25Mb/s to a 7200RPM with 80+Mb/s made everything blazing fast.

I've been cooing over an SSD for a while now, but have at least 360Gb of data that I'd need to have on an internal drive .. which is the sticking point.

 

Battery lifetime:

Upgrading from a 80 min laptop to a 260 min laptop was a huge step. I'd drop any other upgrades that hurt battery lifetime to get more minutes out of it rather than start looking for a wall outlet.

 

What Phil said!

 

GT240m -> HD5870

 

1.) 8600M GT 512 mb GDDR2 -> HD 4670 512mb GDDR3 !!
2.) Followed closely by E6600 -> Q9650
3.) Also glad I upgraded to Windows 7. Hated Vista so was a welcome upgrade over XP.
4.) Blu ray drive

Although not the question most disapointing was upgrade to SSD, worst upgrade I made.

 

7-year old Gateway desktop with 1.6GHz AMD, 1GB RAM, 250GB HD and Radeon Xpress 200
>>>>>>>>
Envy 14 with 2.4GHz Core i5, 8GB RAM, 500GB HD and ATI 5650.

Once my files are moved over I'm going "Office Space" on the old computer.

 

lol mine's comming soon...

well mate , it was ur luck.. u bought the wrong brand SSD... but for me an SSD upgrade will be super!

 

SSD, the docking station, Windows 7 and moving up to 4gb of RAM. In that order of importance.

On the desktop, moving to RAID-1 has been a spectacular help and performance boost (Linux software RAID-1). And I am very impressed with virtualization (through Virtualbox).

 

Going from a SXPS 16 to an Alienware M17x Btw Sgogeta I used to have cable and wireless in Antigua those speeds are insane never reached anything like that

 

Well, I upgraded my old M570RU with these specs:
1,83 GHZ Intel Core Duo
512MB RAM
8800M GTX

I upgraded it to a 570ETU, basically I installed a new motherboard in the old M570ru chassis, bought a new CPU & new RAM. Current specs:
2,93Ghz QX9300
4GB RAM
8800M GTX

Total price: $700

Worth it imo. Got a serious performance boost in CPU heavy games like GTA IV, CSS and so on.

 

Probably going from the T5550 to the T8300, especially with the volume of media encoding I do, and the time I've spent unplugged these past eight months.

 

Going from 512MBs to 2 GBs of RAM in my 1st generation MacBook all the way back in 2006 was gigantic.

I am hoping that the Windows 7 ---> Windows 8 upgrade brings some great features without bogging the system down too much.

 

As of now, switching to Linux was by far the best.

 

Probably giving my second hand, 3 year old T61 a CPU upgrade from T7100 to a T9300. No longer I have to downclock the processor to get acceptable temperatures, I can leave the T9300 on stock speeds enjoying a performance boost and still achieve the same, sometimes lower temperatures than before.

 

Upgrading the ram in a tecra M9 from 512mb to 2gb made a huge difference.

 

T8100 to X9000 in my M1730 and have it overclocked. Talk about 2.1GHz to 4.0GHz. Helped drastically in my 3D rendering and video/music decoding and encoding in Adobe Premier Pro. Will definitely benefit from a 4 or 6 core setup in future.

RAM upgrade from 4 to 8GB meant alot to my photoshop and intensive editing needs. Looking for a 16GB setup in future. Always using around 7.5GB on average.

I bring my laptop to places and yet it must not compromise power and performance, so a desktop is a no for me.

EDIT: And I shall never forget the transitioning from an 8600M GT to 9800M GTX SLI. Inspiron 1720 -> XPS M1730.

 

Copper shim between my GPU and the GPU heatsink in my GX640. Dropped ~15C from stock.

 

It would have to be in my older Acer 3680. I upgraded the processor from a Celeron M440 to a Core 2 Duo T5500. MASSIVE improvement. Then I used the M440 to upgrade another family member's Celeron M410 notebook, so improvements all around!

 

Lenovo T500 >>> HP8530P.

 

upgraded my ram from 4 gb to 8gb, now thinking to upgrade to 840qm or 940xm es from 820qm.

 

XP -> Seven
Ram upgrade 1GB -> 4Gb
Analog -> Digital tv tuner

Next one: Seagate Momentus XT or any SSD

 

No doubt about it... best upgrades have always been going to a new platform.

Maxing out the RAM to the most the platform supports from day 1 (or as close to the first day I buy the system as possible). Currently 8GB RAM is my standard across notebooks and desktops.

Also, what stays the same across all platforms is having the best available HD installed at any given time. That is the Momentus XT right now in notebooks and a 4 x Raptor setup on my desktop workstations (no RAID, BTW).

Last, but certainly not least is having the best O/S for the hardware available - that is now (easily) Win 7 x64, but before Win 7 x64, Vista x64 fit the bill very nicely with 8GB of RAM.

And, all of the above in the order shown!

Cheers!

 

the best upgrade i've done so far is putting windows 7 pro on my precision m4400 (it came with vista).

but i'm looking to upgrade the processor to a QX9300 (maybe) and the hard drive to a SSD when prices come down. hopefully the momentus XT i'll be buying in a month or two (while waiting a year or so for a 256gb ssd to be sanely priced) will be a good upgrade too.