Upgrade an old laptop or buy new ?

I recently bought a Dell Latitude D630 and it’s nowhere near as fast as I was expecting for Something so relatively modern.
If I scroll a page, for example, it can take several seconds for the page to actually move, or if I hover over a link, it takes several seconds for the cursor to change from an arrow to a pointing finger.
It’s got a 1.8Ghz CPu and 512Mb of RAM.
It’s also got an 80Gb HDD, which is plenty for me.

I was looking at upgrading, but at £52 for 4Gb of RAM plus £34 for a 2.6Ghz CPU, I wondered if I’d be better off spending the money on a super duper new one.

Is replacing a CPU and RAM something I can easily do myself and is it worth it ?

What’s the best value new laptop just for watching Youtube videos and stuff on a decent sized screen ?

Replacing the RAM and changing the HDD to an SSD are both easy upgrades.

Replacing the CPU isn’t something you should normally do, especially in a laptop.

What OS is it running? 512 Mb of RAM really isn’t a lot these days.

512MB RAM? that’s really pretty low these days I’d say. It’s not the cache that’s 512MB..?

1.8GHz should be OK really for browsing and such like.

anti-virus working in background? what is showing as other processes in activity monitor?

Ram is generally straightforward although unless you are using a 64bit OS the you won’t be able to use it all. Not sure about the CPU but the best upgrade I did recently was an ssd into my MacBook.

I don’t know about “relatively modern”, I’m in the process of decommissioning all our D620s and D630s at work.

That said though, for the cost I’d be tempted to upgrade the memory at least, maybe get a single 2Gb stick to go alongside your existing 512 if budget is an issue.

A new machine would be better in every way of course, but you’re not going to get a new laptop plus change for £100.

Ram is generally straightforward although unless you are using a 64bit OS the you won’t be able to use it all.

Oh gods, not this old chestnut again.

With 4Gb installed you’ll be able to use most of it, and the overheads of going from x86 to x64 will almost certainly outweigh any perceived benefit of “using all the memory” despite what the bottom half of the Internet would have you believe. Ie, for most practical purposes a 32-bit system accessing ~3.5Gb of RAM is likely to be preferable to a 64-bit system which can access the full 4Gb.

There are a few reasons why you may want to jump to x64 at 4Gb, but “to use all the memory” is not one of them.

If you’re still in the process of decommissioning D630s, Cougar, then that makes them relatively modern by my standards. I only bought a D630 because Mrs MTG’s daughter got her a decommissioned one from work last year, so I figured they can’t be too far out of date. It’s not like everyone stopped using them 5 years ago.

It’s Windows XP Professional. I can’t find any mention of 64 bit, so I’m assuming it’s 32 bit.
I used the Crucial analyser thing to tell me it’s got 512Mb RAM.
Going by what I’ve read, and I really am learning all this as I go along, 4Mb is the maximum it can use, so I’ll give that a go then for £52, unless anyone recommends a better source ?

Double check with the System capabilities About window, but it might have 512MB right enough. What’s the cost of 2GB of RAM? that might be enough (but maybe not..)

XP is fast approaching sell-by date (though I think Microsoft keep putting that date back due to many corporate sites still using it).

It’s Windows XP Professional. I can’t find any mention of 64 bit, so I’m assuming it’s 32 bit.

64-bit XP is rare (and crap), it’s highly unlikely that that’s what you’ve got in a system shipped with 512Mb.

Is it 1x 512 stick you’ve got in there, or 2x 256’s? CPU-Z (google it) will tell you.

2.5Gb should give you a decent cost / performance increase.

Can’t believe no-one’s mentioned Linux yet? You may get a decent upgrade just by switching to a lightweight Linux distro – prefect for just surfing/watching youtube vids TBH

Was just about to… G, before you spunk 50 quid on RAM, try Linux Mint. You can run it from a USB stick or DVD without installing, to see if it makes a difference (it will…). Get the long term support version:

http://www.linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=103

‘Burn’ it to a USB using UNetbootin http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/

Plug USB in and choose to boot from USB (normally by hitting F2 or DEL or something just after powering on). Check everything works (internet, sound, screen brightness, etc) and if you like it, install either alongside or over Windows.

As you use Garmin, you will have to add the communicator plugin once you’re up and running, from here http://www.andreas-diesner.de/garminplugin/doku.php?id=start

That should be it.

Oh gods, not this old chestnut again.

With 4Gb installed you’ll be able to use most of it,

So you agree that it won’t all be avaialbe.

and the overheads of going from x86 to x64 will almost certainly outweigh any perceived benefit of “using all the memory” despite what the bottom half of the Internet would have you believe. Ie, for most practical purposes a 32-bit system accessing ~3.5Gb of RAM is likely to be preferable to a 64-bit system which can access the full 4Gb.

There are a few reasons why you may want to jump to x64 at 4Gb, but “to use all the memory” is not one of them.

and that would be why I never said any such thing.

Shuddha got a Chromebook.

(although if you want a monster screen size then p’haps not)