What was your best notebook upgrade?

windows 7 was a great upgrade over vista... chances of apps hanging is much lower compared to vista... overall , windows 7 is a super upgrade.

 

my precision shipped with vista x64 business, the inspiron 1525 i bought for my mum in the same order as my precision came with vista home basic.

it really frustrated me that vista basic on that low end pentium M computer felt snappier and faster than my precision which cost more than twice as much

although after some updated drivers and SP1 vista was much improved.

when the next version of windows comes out mum will be getting my win7 pro license and i'll upgrade.

 

Changing the standard Samsung 5400 rpm 320GB HD with a Seagate Momentus XT 7200 rpm 500GB. My F11 now feels a lot faster.

 

"The next one" LOL

 

I agree with the Seagate Momentus XT. Best hardware upgrade I've done. Beat out the Kingston HyperX low latency memory, and even the Core 2 Extreme CPU.

If software counts, then Windows 7 is way up there. Simply an awesome OS.

 

not mine but we recently swapped out my grandfathers 80 gb 5400rpm in his macbook to a 500 gb 7200 rpm we also upgraded from 1 GB ram to four GB

 

very true.. Mac OS is useless but i guess 128GB Crucial C300 SSD is going to be awesome!

 

A 7200rpm hard drive and 4GB of ram on my previous notebook, and that was with running Vista Home Premium. Had I been able to run 7 on it would have been an even bigger plus......

 

Seagate Momentus PSD (Hybrid) 160GB 5400RPM -> WD Scorpio Black 320GB 16MB 7200RPM (WD3200BEKT).

Just awesome!

 

May be simple, but I upgraded my old Acer from 512MB of RAM to 2GB and it was like having a whole new laptop! Hoping to upgrade my current laptop to a SSD sooner rather than later!

 

i totally agree.. i had 1GB RAM in my desktop and when i got my laptop with 4GB, it was just pure awesome..

 

the 40gb intel ssd makes my gateway super fast

 

Upgraded Aspire 8930G from T6600 @ 2.2GHz 800MHz FSB
to X9100 Extreme Edition @ 3.06GHz 1064MHz FSB. Additional X25 SSD now makes this a windows 7 rocket startup 17sec even needing fingerprint login.
Makes rendering raw video in CS5 a pinch, dont even here the fan anymore running windows 7 64 bit, Office 2010, Visio 2010, and Autocad in mutitasking work does not even slow down.
Best 600euro's ever spent on upgrading machine which cost new 599.
Happy teddybear here

 

lol for 1200 euros you could have bought an MSI GX640 which would toast this machine

 

HDD 7200rpm 320GB with Win 7

from a 3 yr old dieing 5400rpm 160GB Vista

 

I'd have to say the $35 I spent on a 1 GB RAM module to bring my compaq nc6000 to 1.5 GB (windows 7 runs really slow with only 0.5 GB of RAM). It ran so much faster

 

Windows XP SP3.

 

totally fail... XP1,2 or 3 or whatever XP is always going to be a fail system for me.. most unattractive and slow OS... prefer even Windows 2000 over it.

 

You are aware that changing the window style to classic and the start menu to the old style makes them look identical.

As for it being slow, I'd have to disagree. It runs on my PentiumII desktop. I'll admit that Windows 2000 was faster, but the features added in XP were well worth it.

 

This.

The green taskbar buttun in the lower left is unattractive but I've replaced that with the Luna Element Black Theme on every one of my computers. Even ones that came with Vista Business and Windows 7.

If you really think XP is slow, try putting it on your Asus G73JH and compare to whatever you have now.

 

other than slightly better graphics, XP was a downgrade for me.

 

slightly better graphics?

You mean that it ran less processes than Vista/Windows 7 which allowed your CPU to focus more on the task at hand? Meaning, it is/was faster.

 

Sorry i wasn't clear enough.. what i meant was that compared to windows 2000 , Windows XP was pretty much the same except for better graphics.

 

1. Buying Windows 7 Ultimate last October
2. putting 6 GB's or ram in my notebook
3. SSD

 

Adding my second 4870M to my Alienware

 

lol obviously.. CF own

 

Yes.... This ^^

 

Core 2 Duo T9900 CPU.


--

 

1. Upgrading from 5400rpm to Indilinx SSD
2. Upgrading from Intel 3945 to 4965 (wireless transfer speed increased by 4-6x)

 

Win 7 (from XP) was number 1 by far.
Wireless up to 5300 was pretty nice (and cheap)
Mem to 4GB was nice but by the time the price was $40 or so, it didn't feel like much of an "upgrade".
Hardrive from 100 to 320 was pretty nice as well.

 

ditching my macbook for my alienware. Best upgrade ever.

But other than that it was getting 2 more Gb's of ram for said macbook.

 

totally agree.. my mum's notebook has a 3945 card and seriously is crap.. my 5100 toasts it..

obviously , macbooks are crap .. nver liked them.. my G73 cost as much as a macbook but has 100 times better performance

 

I haven't upgraded my laptop hardware so far. I know this is in the hardware thread, but I guess my best "upgrade" was installing Windows 7 on this good ol' Vostro. It still has XP though [dual-boot XP/7]. I think XP is still good, especially with all the tweaks I made, both performance and aesthetic tweaks. But 7 was just snappier, easier to use. I haven't played games using 7 yet, maybe when I upgrade my hard drive [my Win7 is running on a 41.5GB partition].

 

My first laptop in 2006 came with Vista 32-bit and 1GB RAM. The best upgrade for me at that point was upgrading to 2GB RAM. Seriously, Vista and 1GB RAM is a joke.

 

Upgrading from a Western Digital Scorpio Blue 500gb (stock HDD in my laptop) o a Corsair Force 120gb. Then, buying a $10 portable SATA->USB enclosure and using the WD as a portable hard drive. Awesome

 

From most of the posts in this thread, it looks like going to a SSD is the most popular upgrade. If you really use 400GB-500GB on a regular basis, is it really worth upgrading to a SSD and having to carry around a portable drive especially if you move around and travel a lot? Are the performance gains so HUGE that it makes having to carry around an additional drive worth it?

 

If I'd have to connect external storage all the time I wouldn't do it. Too much hassle in my opinion.

PS. Seagate Momentus XT combines best of both worlds.

 

I like the concept, but I just am not willing to buy anything from Seagate. I've seen so many of my friends have their Seagate drives fail within the last year.

Hopefully other companies will see what a good short term idea this is (until SSDs get cheap enough for everyone, and have good capacities) and give the Momentus XT some competition. I'd get a Toshiba, Western Digital, or a Hitachi version if any of them made one.

 

With a Compaq desktop with AMD K6 @ 500MHZ, 64MB, 5GB HDD to a Compaq laptop with a AMD K6 @ 550MHZ, 196MB ram and a tiny 10GB hard drive, to a custom built desktop by me, with a 1.6 P4, 256MB Ram, 40GB HDD, Geforce3 chip from another Dell machine, to a Dell desktop with a P4 3.0GHZ W/HT, 1GB ram, 80GB HDD, ATI X300 videocard. OH man that was such an big improvement. Then to the new Macbooks when they first came out, the basic model 13in, 1.8 CoreDuo, 1GB, etc. Sold that, Got a Dell Insprion 2.0GHz C2D, 2GB ram, 160GB HDD, 8600GT M. Sold that.
Got a HP DM3 Specs in signature. (Kinda feels like I downgraded) LOL
Also got a dead DV9000 from a friend, which I'm planning on reflowing this week.

 

Best upgrade was going to Windows 7, period.

 

I am one of these unlucky ones that got burnt by Seagate in the past..Maybe it was the luck of the draw but I am staying clear and as far away as I can from Seagate.

 

Sirhcz0r and thundernet,

Basing current/future decisions on historical experience is a surefire way to get left behind - very quickly.

I too was burned by Seagate (4 times!) in the past, but with an open mind and hope that they learned something valuable, I tried the XT and am amazed at what is possible (storage-wise) in a portable system.

How amazed am I? My VAIO can (in specific scenarios) outperform my Raptor based desktop. With double the capacity and half the price of my Raptor my productivity on the VAIO increased by 25-30% over the 7K500 I had in previously.

If I wasn't willing to try/test Seagate once more, I would not only be missing out on the increased performance, but I would also be blindly led by a past experience that has no bearing on current/future products.

I'm not trying to get you to like Seagate. I'm saying that your approach will leave you with very little choices in the future - because all manufacturers will burn you at one point in time or another.

 

Right. I've had RAM chips go bad, hard drives go bad, and DVD drives go bad albeit few and far between. But for me its all in how the manufacturer handles it than the fact that the drive went bad. Every component has failures, but it's really how well the company reacts that is most important to me.

 

totally agree.. service is something which matters a lot but its getting worse and worse as years go..

 

First of all, you're completely right. After a while I'll get over the failures and make purchase decisions based on logic and not emotion.

I've gotten over my bad Nvidia experience now (8600M GT), but losing a hard drive was a much bigger deal than having a graphics card fail. It was also worse than most hard drive failures just because of the circumstances. My friend had just received his Asus G51J, we set up everything, installed everything he uses, and things like that. Then the drive failed before we had a backup of that.

I have no idea what Seagate did. All I know is it kept happening. Another friend had a Seagate drive in his M11x fail later on. I think even that replacement drive failed (luckily he had most of his stuff on his desktop during all this).

 

Sirhcz0r,

I totally understand that losing a HD with all your data is far worse than almost any other component failing.

But, you just have to be cynical and optimistic at the same time.

Be cynical enough that you do backups consistently and enthusiastically. But be optimistic enough that you can always give every manufacturer a second chance - no matter what part of your old computer went up in smoke.

 

I'll be more enthusiastic about backups once I get either one of these or a SSD! I did a recent backup of my M11x since I needed to fully encrypt it to bring it somewhere, and it seemed like a good idea to back everything up beforehand.

Whether or not I get a Momentus XT will ultimately come down to whether or not SSD prices drop enough before my next upgrade.

When are the G3 Intel SSDs coming out? If 160GB is indeed the lowest capacity G3 model, it will probably be priced around ~$100 USD like the G2 40GB model.

 

Funny you said that - with my SSD, I'm doing backups now more religiously than ever. (Yeah, I have trust issues).

I don't think that 160GB will be the lowest G3 model available - if I'm not mistaken, it will be 80GB for the G3 X25-V models (which I'm sure will come in at a higher price point initially than the G2 40GB versions).

With the Momentus XT, you'll have to get a premium SSD (or at least use the 'disable idle states' tweak to say you 'upgraded' from the XT.

If you want/need more performance and HD capacity too - the XT is worth buying now.

 

You should always do regular backups anyhow. And if you have a spare PC it's worth the $100 investment for Windows Home Server. Your machine will be backed up every night. If you only have a PC or two to backup, then a couple 1TB WD Green drives will do and be cheap too.

 

Could you elaborate a bit? What exactly do u need other than a copy of Windows Home server?