What was your best notebook upgrade?

A functioning computer (mainboard and CPU adn RAM) as well as drives
And the backup is done via the connect software that comes with Windows Home Server - at least the prebuilt ones - or can be downloaded from Microsoft.

 

my opinion

Acer 4315
Upgrade Celeron to Core2Duo

 

My best upgrade wasn't for myself, but for a parent.

I picked up a Dell Vostro from a friend inexpensively for them. They were paying for the notebook, but I decided to spend a little of my own and do some work with it. So I did the following:

-Upgraded the processor from a Core 2 T5250 to a Penryn Core 2 T8100
-Upgraded from Dell's 1390 wifi card to an Intel 4965AGN
-Replaced the touchpad/palmrest (it had scratches and a bad touchpad button)
-Replaced the microphone board with a webcam/microphone board, and a webcam display bezel
-Replaced the combo optical drive with a Pioneer DL DVD-writer
-Replaced the hinges (they had a bit of slop) with higher quality ones

The system is quite zippy, and looks brand new. They love it.

 

SSD without any hesitation ! Spectacular.

 

The C751NR
Upgraded the cpu from a 1.66 to a 2.4 ghz
RAM from a 512 MB to 2 GB
HD from a 120 GB 4200 RPM drive to a 320 GB 7200 RPM drive.
It runs Win 7 pretty smooth.

 

Best upgrade on my laptop is my SSD, it's been almost a year now and I can't say that i feel the need to upgrade anything else... for now

 

SSD, hands down. I've owned dozens of computers, mostly laptops. Nothing compares to upgrading any laptop HDD to an SSD.
You'll never go back to platter drives, not willingly anyway.

 

upgraded my Rams for my Dell Insprion 1300.
its gonna work for more years to come

 

easily the ES Q9100 i put in my GX720. even though it doesn't have temp sensors, laptop runs cool, AND it has unlocked multipliers! Responds well to overlocking ( i can get extra 30% out of it), and it undervolts!

 

DV2 - I "upgraded" a broken LCD to a working one
It took a lot of effort, though. The bezel of the LCD just didn't want to come apart.

Otherwise, nothing fancier than a few ram upgrades to my M1210 and N10e

 

For my first laptop that I've had. The only major upgrade I did was RAM.

 

Have to agree with the SSD because the benefits are so very visible and audible all the time (or not in the latter case as its completely silent). Boot times and shutdown times are so short that I hardly have to wait anymore. I was running a full system scans with MalwareBytes and Avast concurrently yesterday and both finished so quickly it was scary. I used to do quickscans most of the time because full scans usually take *forever* and make alot of other apps dependent on hdd access grind like mad. Most applications load damn near instantly. The sound of thrashing hard drive activity has been banished forever.

The first time I fired up Windows 7 on an SSD it was actually disconcerting because when Windows loads, hard drive thrashes and thats just the way its always been. Except its not like that anymore.

Best PC upgrade I ever bought imo. Better even than a dx 9 graphics card (ATI Radeon 9600 pro) on the eve of Half Life 2's release.

 

I've stated already that a platform change is what has always been the biggest upgrade for me.

If a few of my clients knew about NBR, they would state something like the following:

The best 'upgrade' was:

1) Max out the RAM in the system.

2) Uninstall Norton/McAffee/etc. - install MSE.

3) Shrink the partition of C: to the smallest size possible (and leave about 10-20GB free space).

4) Move all data to new partition made possible by 3) above.

5) Ensure latest versions of all drivers/programs are installed - including the O/S.

6) Ensure system has latest BIOS/Firmware.

7) Point the 'User' folder to the new partition and existing data.

8) Disable System Restore.

9) Disable 'Index this drive' for all partitions (including any 'restore' partitions) - do not disable the Indexing service though!

10) Disable all 'fade/slide effects' so that the O/S is more directly connected to the user inputs.

11) Use PerfectDisk on 'stealthmode'.


The above 'simple' steps brought one system from a 15 minute boot time and a 5+ minute 'open Windows Mail' ordeal to a point where it can easily compete with any system available for sale currently.

How competitive? Well, the system was ready to be junked - now, even $400 desktops look over priced to the (very happy) client.

And all for less than the price of a (very) nice dinner for two.

 

I finally can add my best ever upgrade! 128GB Crucial C300 SSD!

 

sean473,

how much performance did you gain?

 

Asus G73JH-B1 Modified
Intel Core i7-740qm , 8GB DDR3-1333MHz RAM , Blue Ray Player,1920X1080 Full HD Screen
1GB GDDR5 ATI Mobility HD 5870(Best GPU in World)
128GB C300 SSD and 500GB MomentusXT

That's quite a nice setup Sean!

 

I got a M225. Better than a mechanical hard drive, but there are much better SSDs around. Boots are down to 20 seconds without tweaking, so I'm satisfied.
I'll be glad if I don't have any data integrity issues, like I have heard of with previous firmwares.

Now, the bottleneck in my laptop is the CPU and GPU (and screen), but I will defer those till my next notebook purchase for hopefully at least a year or two.

 

Back to 2004, The "historic" upgrade for my previous laptop is adding a WIFI PCMCIA CARD to it as it was bought without wireless ability. The unforgettable moments surfing the internet using wifi for the first time.

 

lol.. my laptops always had wireless cards but considering the first proper laptop i saw was in 2003.

 

I consider removing all the initial company bloatware from any notebook as one of the best upgrade somebody can do.

 

+Rep to you!

So true, so true...

 

I consider a clean install an even better upgrade.

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...65-notebook-recieves-serious-meaker-love.html

 

1. Remove Norton, and/or McAfee. Install "free replacements" you can find online.
2. Add as much RAM as your wallet can stand.
3. Do away with the M$ video player. Standard M$ video player gathers information for M$ and slows your system. Replace it with something like VLC.
4. Contrary to popular belief, keep system restore. Just be sure to watch it often so that it will not get bloated. If you catch a bug, system restore may be what gets you out of trouble the "easiest" way possible.

 

are you sure about this?

 

My best upgrade was to overclock my GPU lol!

The ATI 5850 is at stock: 625/1000
Now: 860/1080 @ 1.15v (not in video)

But in the video its @ 815/1075
YouTube - BF:BC2 MAXED-OUT all the settings - MSI GX640
(3 weeks old)

-Fraps show the fps in the top left
-Settings are in the first 10secs of the video
-Temps are at the end, after 3hrs of play

If that doesn't count?:
Swapping the stock thermal paste for Arctic's newest MX-3 paste and also swapping the stock thermal pads for MX-3 thermal paste!

 

Whole works lol;

Original configuration Now

Core 2 Duo T5470 1.6 GHz Core 2 Duo T7500 2.2 GHz

160 GB Hitachi 5400 rpm HDD OCZ Agility 2 60 GB SSD

Windows XP Pro x86 Windows 7 Home Premium x64

2 GB DDR2 667 4 GB DDR2 800 Crucial

New video card coming soon..

 

Installed OCZ Vertex 2 today.

Best upgrade ever.

 

Same here. SSDs rock.

 

SSD, CPU upgrade and clean installing OS.

 

940xm, 180w psu and hope to change to install it ssd soon

 

I'm really happy with my solid state drive. Rebooting isn't at all bothersome, and Ubuntu installed incredibly fast on my X200s.

The other component I'm still happy with is the MR5870 that's holding up just fine in my M15x.

 

Current Best Upgrade was Upgrading to my Sager NP7280 from Dell Inspiron 1300 Notebook

am planning to have an samsung 470 series SDD in my new sager.

 

Hmm I can't really decide so my favorite upgrades on my T500 are:

1. Replacing the stock TIM on my CPU/GPU with the Shin Etsu x23-7783D
2. Adding an intel ssd
3. Upgrading to a WUXGA display

 

Mine are the following: Windows XP to Windows 7; Ram Upgrades.

 

Favorite Upgrades by Laptop:

Asus G50vm-X1

1) Vista to W7
2) Laptop cooling pad
3) CAT6 to wireless N

Asus G60JX-Rbbx05

1) w7 Home Premium to w7 Ultimate
2) 4 GB 1066 to 8 GB 1066 (1333 Capable)
3) Logitech wireless mouse

----
Once the Sandy-Bridge Intel chips come out!! I will be adding a i7 Quad to my lappy. Im sooo happy!! lol

 

Mine was the entire notebook in general...

switching from a Toshiba Satellite A215 that was overused and broken...

to what i have now (see signature)

If you went from a computer with 812mb of ddr2 ram, an IGP thats not even close to being built for gaming, and not being able to run a single Steam game then you'd be just as excited as I am

 

Care to donate an SSD to my fanless notebook project?

 

I haven't upgraded anything except my old P8400, the x9100(150$ from a friend) I got is definitely worth it, it totally makes my ps2/wii emulation much smoother, some games was previously unplayable through emulation due to its slow speed, but now the x9100 completely turned the table Overall I am very happy with the upgrade considering the fact I got some money off my p8400 too, I actually paid like 80$ for such an upgrade I was planning to buy a new laptop as soon as SB and ATI 6000 GPU hit the market, but the new x9100 power begs me to hold off for a while

Another purchase I made wasn't exactly an upgrade, it's the Zalman NC2000 cooler I bought, it brings down my GPU/CPU temp by 10-15 C, on top of that, it runs almost silent and fan noise is barely audible heck, even the internal laptop fan is noisier than the cooler.

 

Well isn't the x9100 a big jump in heat over the P8400? 25 watt to 44 watt?

 

Well, it does run hotter than the P8400, but not much hotter, my overclocked P8400(at 2.66Ghz, no undervolt) usually sit around 58 C when heavily stressed, the overclocked x9100(at 3.33Ghz, undervolted) runs about 7-10 C hotter on average, so it's easily manageable. If you compare a stock p8400 to a stock X9100 however, I assume the the temp difference will be much larger than 7-10C.

 

Ah well good to know, as I was considered upgrading to a Core 2 Extreme for my Vostro 1500 but the 44 watt TDP of most C2E honestly scared me as the temperatures of the GTX 480 first did when it came out..

 

Don't frown on those TDP numbers, they don't mean much for the temp. Their TDP are rated higher because they have unlocked multipliers, which allows easy overclocking. A T9900(3.06ghz, 35W) and a X9100(3.06Ghz, 44W) should run at same temp when stressed , provided they both run at the same clock speed/voltage with same cooling.

When I first got the X9100, I undervolted the chip without overclocking, guess what, the temp under load was about the same as my overclocked p8400, which has a rated TDP of 25W!! Although it's unfair to compare an undervolted CPU to an overclocked one, but it pretty much sums up the insignificance of those TDP numbers.

I planned to upgrade my p8400 to a T9900/X9100 LONG ago, but same as you I was VERY concerned about the heat and decided to give up, but it changed when I accidentally got a good offer of X9100 You can upgrade to X7900/X7800, with Throttlestop you can easily overclock the chip over 3Ghz and at the same time undervolt a good amount depending on your luck. If you work a lot with programs/games that benefit from a high clocked dual core CPU, then such a upgrade is definitely worth it!!

 

Hrm I'm looking at X7800/X7900 all they offer is unlocked multiplier and faster out of the box speeds. All my Vostro 1500 does is game, and my T7500 already has 4 MB cache so all I would be achieving is faster clock speed, which I believe 2.2 GHz is fine for most games? Plus I someday will upgrade the GPU which I think is holding back my laptop moreso than anything else in the laptop..

Wouldn't an X9000 or a T9500 be a better upgrade as it has more cache after GPU?

 

Yeah, the 8400M gs is the first thing to bottleneck you in games before everything else. A x9000 will be much better, but does your laptop support it? T7500 is a merom, x9000/T9500 is penryn. Anyway, I would upgrade your GPU first and perhaps CPU later, 8400M gs is too weak for modern gaming.

 

In the order of higher impact to lower on my vostro 1500

1GB -> 4GB RAM
T5470 -> T9300 CPU
120GB -> 640GB Harddisk (mainly speed)
8400M GS -> 8600M GT GPU (i don't game much)
Wireless G -> Wireless N

 

RAM. Nothing else provides such a nice performance boost.

2GB > 4GB TWICE. Although once was DDR2 and the other DDR3! Both upgrades were done right after purchase since buying and upgrading the memory myself was cheaper than getting it with said amount from the manufacturer (saved $50-150).

 

usapatriot, I agree totally - RAM is the limiting factor as that's where the actual work is really done!

 

Hrm now that you mention RAM, I put my Vostro 1500 when it had 2 GB of RAM with XP Professional to 4 GB and I noticed alot more responsiveness with XP...odd though cause when XP first came out everybody had like 256-512 MB RAM..

 

I've noticed the same thing. Computers used to do well with 256MB under XP. But nowadays that would be unworkable. I will have to try Service Pack 1 some time and then see if it's SP2 or SP3 that ups the memory requirement so.