Upgrade or new laptop?

[Deleted Member I]

I have had a Sony Vaio SZ laptop for the last couple of years.

It's only got 1GB of memory and 80GB hard drive .. as it was a sony

It's getting really really slow at doing things. Open web browser, open outlook 2007 etc

Would upgrading it to 2GB solve the problem?

Or should I just get a new one? If I get a new one .. what's best out there for £500?

The stuff I like to have Dell Alienware or XPS or Apple all seem to work out to be over £1000 or close to £2000 ... so no chance

 

[ChasMill]

Have a look at cruical.com for memory upgrades. I added memory to my desktop and the difference was amazing - much cheaper than buying a new one.

 

[Deleted Member I]

Have a look at cruical.com for memory upgrades. I added memory to my desktop and the difference was amazing - much cheaper than buying a new one.

I have checked it's £25 .. but I am worried about breaking it whilst trying to change the memory

 

[PDiddy]

When did you last rebuild / reinstall the base OS and all of your applications?? While this is always a time consuming exercise it is ultimately a worthwhile one that would help to bring your laptop back to life and remove the crude that builds up over time -

 

[Clive]

I have checked it's £25 .. but I am worried about breaking it whilst trying to change the memory

Get in the car and pop over to Reading - I'll put the kettle on.

Are you sure there is expansion space for extra memory?

 

[Fanum]

When did you last rebuild / reinstall the base OS and all of your applications?? While this is always a time consuming exercise it is ultimately a worthwhile one that would help to bring your laptop back to life and remove the crude that builds up over time -

Definitely worth a go....it'll speed things up tremendously

Adding memory to a laptop isn't hard Tom- there are loads of sites out there with 'idiot guides' to doing it (no offense intended ) with photos etc- just some basic common sense precautions and you'll be fine (anti static strap, not using too much force, doing it step by step and reading the instructions properly )

Look at it this way- If you sell the old laptop, you're going to have to clear down the Hard drive anyway to get rid of all that stuff on it you may not want someone to see so you might as well reformat it and install the OS again before ditching it

There are, again, lots of guides to doing that, and I think it's been covered here in some detail too

 

[cookie]

When did you last rebuild / reinstall the base OS and all of your applications?? While this is always a time consuming exercise it is ultimately a worthwhile one that would help to bring your laptop back to life and remove the crude that builds up over time -

that will make a bigger improvement than adding more memory. adding some RAM afterwards would be nice too.

 

[thauma]

When did you last rebuild / reinstall the base OS and all of your applications?? While this is always a time consuming exercise it is ultimately a worthwhile one that would help to bring your laptop back to life and remove the crude that builds up over time -

I agree with this ....... BUT....... make sure that you have all the relevant drivers first.

Extra memory will also help and should be fairly cheap.

 

[Deleted Member I]

Get in the car and pop over to Reading - I'll put the kettle on.

Are you sure there is expansion space for extra memory?

Will order kit from Crucial and come round to Reading!

Arrange time once the memory arrives from Crucial

 

[Dickieboy]

Tom if you haven't already bought yet check the price against this company they're pretty good.

http://www.mrmemory.co.uk/index.asp

 

[SJRoome]

Hi

Before you start changing the hardware do the following.

1 download a copy of ccleaner. Use it to check your registry and remove all the incorrect entries. Then use it to remove all the rubbish files on your hard disk.

2. download a copy of easycleaner. do the same.

3. download a copy of spybot. Use it to remove all the spyware on your machine.

4. Defragment the disk. Either use the defragmentor that comes with windows or download JKDefrag and use that.

5. Use either ccleaner or Easycleaner to tell you what programs are being run at startup and remove all those you dont need.

Once you have done all this and you are finding the laptop still too slow - then its time to think about a memory upgrade.

Steve

 

[Deleted Member I]

2GB ordered

£24 delivered so well worth trying that first. Hope it works ..

Thanks for the software cleaning instructions .. I will be doing that as well, so hopefully the machine will be really really fast after that

 

[Onwalkabout]

If there is the latent geek in you, download the latest copy of Linux. I am using Suse 11.1 (www.opensuse.org) on a 5 yo sony laptop and it works a charm.

The downside is it takes a little getting used to and if you have favorite applications under windows, some will need an emulator or a Linux version. Configuring is usually not a problem but can get a little 'interesting'. There is a lot of help on the web.

The upside is that the software is free, secure and very stable.

For old machines, it's not a bad option.

 

[Deleted Member I]

Memory arrived!

 

[Deleted Member I]

Memory upgraded and software cleaned

CHEERS CLIVE