Hardware Kind of a noobish question...

[airpirate545]

I have a Dell laptop thats kinda weak. How in the world do i get more resources so i can do more stuff on my laptop? How much will it cost?

 

[fischju]

If you want it to go a bit faster, turn all of the fancy stuff off.

Right click on My Computer > Properties > Advanced > Performance > Settings > Adjust for best performance.


Also, not much help without posting the model of the laptop.

 

[airpirate545]

In the system info, it says its a Dell ME051

 

[camx]

seriously though, first do your research, figure out what the laptop is equipped with and then figure out what is causing it to perform poorly (in your opinion)

then you decide, is my windoze95 full of junk like spyware and stuff (go start>run> and type "msconfig" and look at your startup options)

or if you really do need rams, look around some sites like newegg or amazon and price yourself some ram. sorry, but with a laptop, your pretty much limited to upgrading ram and hard disk drives.

 

[notnarb]

Right click my computer and go to properties, copy the things it lists there, and paste them here. This is your system's specs not including the graphics card

 

[airpirate545]

ok i looked around and i found a good "Kingston ValueRam 2GB 667MHz DDR2 Non-ECC CL5 DIMM (Kit of 2)" ram module i wood like to buy, but how do i know if its compatible with my laptop?

 

[fischju]

It isn't.

 

[airpirate545]

wat is then? i want at least 2gigs worth of ram

 

[fischju]

Dell ME051 is a BIOS used on many laptops. How are we supposed to know.

 

[notnarb]

Right click my computer and go to properties, copy the things it lists there, and paste them here. This is your system's specs not including the graphics card

quoted for emphasis

 

[airpirate545]

sorry for being so difficult but anyways here is the system specs

Microsoft Windows XP
Home Edition
Version 2002
SP2


IntelÂPentiumÂ
processor 1.70Ghz
1.70GHz, 504 MB of Ram
Physical Address Extension

Display Adapter: Mobile Intel 915GM/GMS, 910 GML Express Chipset Family

 

[notnarb]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductConfi...ry-Configurator

 

[Rayder]

Re-format. Best speed-up of any system that's been running for ages.

 

[airpirate545]

thanks notnarb, found just what im gonna buy

@Rayder: I'll try that too, thanks for the suggestion

 

[DanTheManMS]

Make sure you realize that reformatting deletes all the data from your hard drive, so make sure it's all backed up first.

 

[OutlawGamer]

Easy way to find would be opening the laptop memory area and read the label to see which version/model memory you have.

And then buying it making sure it the same model/version.

Also if you buy faster memory it still should work because your laptop would just tell it to work at the speed of the previous memory you had installed. You can also force the new memory to not act like the previous slower memory if your bios supports that.

 

[Rayder]

Make sure you realize that reformatting deletes all the data from your hard drive, so make sure it's all backed up first.

Yeah, I tend to forget that most people don't have terabytes of space to backup stuff to like I do. ALL of my data is redundant.

So yeah, don't forget to backup stuff first. That would suck to lose everything, which IS what will happen in a re-format. I reformat so often that I forget little bits of info like that.

Thanks for pointing that out DanTheManMS.

 

[Mewgia]

http://www.crucial.com/

Click on the crucial scanner thingie, it will tell you what kind of ram you can take.

And yeah, reformatting and reinstalling is a great speedup if you want to keep Windows, but switching my laptop to Linux made it run so much faster than on Windows so if you really want the most out of your resources, do that.

inb4 linux vs windows flamewar/ over a million "how i do linux" questions