What was your best notebook upgrade?

Windows Vista to Windows 7 64Bit
3Gb Ram to 4 Gb Ram for symmetrical dual channel
HD to SSD
Gateway to Lenovo/IBM

Cheers
3Fees

 

Best upgrade yet:

Acer Aspire 5315, originally 1.7ghz celeron dual core, intel x3100 graphics. Totally fried motherboard. Complete unit. 80$

-New motherboard, rev a07 or something for the 5720g, complete with MXM 2.1 slot 80$ >
-Cut holes for DVI, volume knob, other stuff >
-Installed t6600 2.2ghz and MSI 9600m GT 512mb ddr3 ~120$ >
-Made VGA heatsink with 24 GA copper sheet, ramsinks, another MXM backplate ~10$ >
-Started her up and watched Atlantis: the lost empire (disney 2001) no overheating, fan stayed on low [priceless]

Heatsink is not finished and I need another fan. Pics and progress in custom builds section

 

My best upgrades:
1. Core Solo T1300 to Core Duo T2300 on HP nx6310
2. External 24" LCD for HP 6530b

 

Looking through this thread I cant believe I didnt see a


Windows 98 to XP

I thought that was a pleasure

 

Acer to ASUS

 

That's just funny...

I would say multiple hdd bays, which equipped me with a nice 1.5TB and make it more possible to use my laptop as a desktop.

I'd also like to through HDMI in the mix. Turning my laptop into a media center when traveling, is something I'd never give up.

Then there is the power management of win7 or vista... that made my laptop so much more usable for quick access.

 

You just showing you age... how about from 3.11 to 95... now that was a jump...

 

My best notebook upgrade was definitely going from traditional HDD to SSD, man what a difference that made

 

Upgraded CPU on Acer 5315 to T7500, what a difference that made.

 

I went from a Dell Inspiron 9100 to a Thinkpad T400.

If anyone knows the Inspiron 9100 then they know how big of a POS it is. Got it in 2004 as my first college laptop, spending about $2500. Hated it so much after the first year.

Spent half that on the T400 for what I feel is one of the best all around laptops. And I'm now upgrading it to SSD to make it even better.

Will likely get a new one next year though as I'm much more into tech these days.

 

My Inspiron 9300 that I used for 5 years had a 1.6 ghz Pentium M originally. After a while I bought another cheap 1.6 ghz Pentium M processor of of ebay and did the pinmod trick which turned the new processor into a 2.2 ghz cpu. Better than giving Dell a few hundred more for a cpu upgrade.

 

I did the pin mod on the 9300 as well, was great.

HDD 5400K > SSD (a slow Kingston V100) Fast boot up/shut down, app load.
3GB RAM > 6GB RAM, everyday things seem smoother.
C2D > C2Q with 12MB cache
MS BT Explorer mouse > Logitech performance mouse MX. Extra configurable buttons, but battery life sucks. You can just plug in the mini usb cable to charge though so that's not half bad. Works on glass!

 

sorrrrryyy

 

OneCool,

It is probably the recommended action: otherwise - your system will 'hang' until it is physically stable again while it locks the SSD from performing any work.

Disable it; yes.

 

-> Rather than asking in a "what was you best upgrade" thread, you might get better responses when starting a dedicated thread.

-> Also, I'm not sure what a "free fall service" is, a quick google indicated it's a freefall sensor?
If it is, then it might be an idea to disable it as a SSD does not need it - but randomly switching off a service... -> that might not be ideal. Also, I don't think it's a native Windows Service but rather comes from your manufacturer.

But start your own thread.

 

oops they moved the ssd thread


It was always at the top of this page

 

A real mouse for working at a desk. Much better than using the trackpad. It doesn't make the computer faster, but it makes me more efficient, which is even more important.

 

Mine definitely had to be getting my first laptop accessories worth more than ~$10... My logitech MX revolution was a dream

 

ahem.. speak of "pin mod" (whatever that is), I actually prefer 1.4ghz to 1.6ghz.

For me, the lower it is, the better, due to electrosensitivity.

 

ASUS to Acer, no kidding. ASUS A42J budget series laptop is crap, hot running, and bottom of the surface is too hot to be lap-able. Comparable priced Acer laptop give slightly better hardware and better build quality to boot. Better weight distribution and emission as well.

Going from A42Je (P6100, Mobility HD 5470 512MB, DOS) to 4743ZG (P6200, GT 520M 1GB, Windows 7 HP x64) is the best upgrade I did, ironically its the 3rd laptop I bought. Third time lucky I guess

 

My Asus A9RP would hang with Google Earth and Stellarium, and ran jerkily with BBC iPlayer. First I upgraded to 2Gb memory, 2 sticks, 667 MHz, balanced pair of sticks, CL5, but enough to make GE workable - but slow to load. I have just replaced the Celeron M440 processor with an Intel Core 2 Duo T5600 1.83 GHz, 2 M cache 667 MHz processor (SL9SG) - the 3 software packages now work as I would like. Installed Rightmark CPU clock utility to help monitor should there be problems but ther weren't. Just needed a restart when new hardware had been detected by Windows.

I obtained the processor for £16 on eBay, a price worth the punt if it had not worked. Delivered within 2 days, nicely cleaned and in a robust package from 'pc laptop spares' of Chandlersford. Nicely done! Now available at higher prices, £20 to £99, albeit used.

 

Clean install on my hybrid drive.

 

Crucial M4 128GB SSD.

Mr. Mysterious

 

Intel 320 series 160GB SSD.


--

 

Three letters. SSD. It changed my notebook experience, especially restoring from hibernate.

 

Very bad use of your fast SSD - waking up from hibernate is not materially faster than a cold boot on an SSD.

But the write factor is out of proportion to the 'benefit' you get (imo). Especially if you hibernate/resume several times a day.

 

I tend to buy second hand and usually I look for laptops with Celeron CPU.
Current system:
1- CPU from Celeron 585 to C2D T7300
2- RAM from 1 to 2GB (laptop has only one memory slot)
3- New HDD
4- Added a second wifi antenna.
5- Win7

Best of all aside of the laptop, the above upgrades didn't cost me a thing
I have a few troubles with Win7 in particular with Media Player 12. I still prefer Media Player 11 as WMP12 doesn't like MKV files

 

ssd ssd ssd

 

I went from my Toshiba's 5400RPM HDD (and, while my Intel drive was shipping, my Thinkpad's 7200RPM drive; I didn't notice much difference between the two speeds) to an Intel 320 series 160GB SSD. Internal file transfers, installing downloaded software, and loading large files in a blink of an eye!

 

Sounds lame, but the upgrade from a 7950GTX to a 280M. Drooooool.

 

Same ordeal I had from an Intel GMA 4500 to the HD 3000 (and also the Quadro 2000M, even though it's not a gaming card).

 

I definitely appreciate having added the SSD (and being able to still keep the HDD!). And, in regard to my recent notebooks, I went from an Atom Z520 CPU to an i7. Come to think of it, the latter upgrade is similar to how it feels going from an HDD to an SSD.

 

Strongly disagree. With a large regular HDD and 8GB of RAM, restore to/from hibernate was painfully slow. After the SSD (which is large enough that I don't worry about the size of the 8GB image) the process is 4-5x quicker. Also cold boot is a nonsense answer, it is orders of magnitude slower to get all the apps etc. re-opened and all of the documents re-opened. I am regularly use 6gb+ of memory, with no swap file. BTW I hibernate many times a day....

- Tim

 

how about upgrading the whole laptop? came from a pentium m dothan 1.6ghz with onboard graphics & 1gb ram to my current laptop in my sig. crazy difference. should last me another 5 years or so hopefully.

 

Thats a huge jump. Kind of like when I went from my P4 HT desktop to a 2500K and 6870.

 

I upgraded a Compaq CQ56 from AMD V140 to AMD Phenom II N640 which was a nice upgrade with about 75% improvement on processing power.
However that's nothing compare to my earlier upgrade to an older Compaq V5000Z. For $48 through the Western Digital Customer Loyalty program I upgraded the 40GB Seagate Momentus 4200.2 4200rpm drive with about 19M transfer rate to a 320GB WD3200BEVE with about 50M transfer rate. I also upgraded the CPU from Sempron 3300+ to Turion ML-40 for $18. The $66 investment transformed the V5000Z from an extremely slow PC that's barely usable to a very solid basic PC with very fast response times. The HDD upgrade alone probably reduced the average response time by more than 50%. The CPU upgrade might have helped to a much lesser extent than the HDD upgrade.

 

Take a look at my sig. I've only ever owned a Compaq Presario C700, but I've upgraded the CPU from an Intel Pentium Dual T2310 (1.46GHz) to a Core 2 Duo T8100 (2.10 GHz) and the RAM twice (first from 1 to 2GB of PC2-5300 and then to 3GB of PC2-6400 to accommodate the new CPU).

If the graphics weren't integrated I'd upgrade to Windows 7 and buy either a larger/faster HDD or an SSD, but I'd rather not waste the money if I'm just going to replace it in a year or two.

 

lol, that movie was just mentioned within the past week. Made me want to watch it...

 

i did a leap from a system with the same spec to the system i have in my sig well hum what it was befor i upgraded the hell out of it

 

Upgrading my backlight from CCFL to LED today is the best for me.

 

1 GB to 2GB HDD in my old pentium 133Mhz. It was nice having all that extra space.

 

That reminds me about the Compaq n1015v that I had a long time ago...my first ever laptop. I upgraded both the RAM and HDD. The laptop felt a lot faster after replacing the 4200rpm harddrive with a 5400rpm one.

 

Awesome; I'm doing that next week as soon as my parts arrive!

 

Intro to laptops came with the cheapest Compaq V5000Z, a bad keyboard and several calls later a Compaq V6000T arrived in 5/06. It came with XP but put Vista on it as it was upgradable to use it. The T1350 was upped to aT7200 and OCZ matched 1g 333MHz made run quite well. I'm sure an SSD would double or triple boot and transfer speeds but $$$ prevent that for now.

 

Getting a 128GB Crucial C300 SSD.. It just makes your system so fast.

 

Probably upgrading my 80GB 5400rpm hard drive to a 200GB 7200rpm drive. I was always running out of space with the 80GB so this gave me a lot more headroom. The speed boost was an added bonus.

 

Going from 1280x1024 to 1680x1050 to 1920x1200 (and soon hopefully to 2560 to 1440). I love multitasking and screenspace.
Upgrading from a Geforce 4 MX440SE to a 6800GT.. world of difference.
Oh snap, notebook only uh - Upgrading from a NVIDIA 9600GT to a Radeon Mobility 6970 (changing laptops) made a world of difference for my Starcraft gaming needs. Can play it like I want now instead of running it at low settings for a decent framerate.

I miss the impact of RAM upgrades though, back in the days going from 64 to 128 to 256 to 512MB RAM all made a world of difference. Systems come with enough memory nowadays to at least run decently

 

Upgrading from a single 320GB HDD to a 120GB SSD + 750 GB HDD. It made me feel like I had just gotten new laptop.

 

Upgrading from a single system drive (a 320GB 5400RPM in old laptop, 500GB 7200RPM in current) to a SATAII SSD and a hard drive dock, allowing me to use the old HDDs for storage. I now have plenty of room for my data, finally (when I'm at my desk, that is).

 

1 GB to 4 GB in my 5 year old Gateway. It runs really smooth now. Ram, that is.