The laptop I use for work is getting a little long in the tooth (about 5 years old now), but still pretty functional, aside from having to have Windows on it. It’s time to make it more functional with some much needed and long overdue upgrades. Windows has been behaving pretty dog slow on it for a while now and is way past time for a fresh install to get rid of 5 years of leftover software crap that’s built up.
2GB RAM – $51
I originally asked for a laptop with 1GB RAM, but for some reason it turned into 512MB when the order was placed. How I’ve been limping along running Windows in 512MB of RAM for all these years, I have no idea. The extra memory will definitely be nice though.
6600mAh battery – $72
About a year ago, the original battery went belly up and stopped holding any significant charge. The battery would last about 10 minutes before petering out, so I was restricted to only being able to use the laptop whenever I could plug in. Kind of defeats the purpose of having a laptop. New battery will make me portable again.
120GB hard drive – $60
I’m nowhere near running out of space on the original 60GB hard drive, but a larger hard drive will give me the chance to set up a dual-boot Linux/Windows system, which is something I’ve always wanted to do. The original drive I’ll pop into an enclosure and use it for portable backup.
Considering the fact that I apparently lost one of the DVI outputs on my work computer video card, on top of the earlier computer fail that happened Monday, I may be tempting fate with all of these upgrades. The way things have been going so far, with my luck some other component in the laptop will die and kill the thing shortly after I get all of these upgrades installed.
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Great idea. One piece of experience? Don’t buy the cheaper batteries available online. I did that and was happy for about two months before the battery went puny almost overnight, rendering it all but useless. Next time I’ll spend a little more.
Hmmm. Do you think we should ask someone to bring a backup laptop for Wednesday night’s Meetup Photography meeting?
The advance RSVP looks like a good crowd for our first-ever guest speaker Stacy Pearsall!
Are you bringing any (controlled) Blur photos for the Show & Tell?
Not to worry chuck. I just ordered the hard drive this morning so aside from more RAM and new battery, my computer will still be intact for the meetup. I have one photo for Blur that was taken a couple of years ago that works nicely, but haven’t been able to do anything more recently. Better get cracking I guess