Re: laptop upgrade??

Jaimie Vandenbergh wrote:
On Tue, 27 Nov 2007 05:54:07 -0800 (PST), louscannon
<grahamchapman1@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hi, I can get a battery from Ebay, for about £20, and I've bid a 256
PC133 module for a fiver, and I can add that to the existing 32MB
already installed. Ive checked the HD, and it can be easily slide out
from the bottom, and I just need to get the right sort of Torx head to
get it out. If I go for, say 20GIG or higher, would that be OK?

Yep. That all sounds pretty positive! I'd certainly recommend buying a
new HD rather than an eBay one though. Apart from the usual
second-hand hard drive potential problems, a current 40+gig drive will
be considerably faster, quieter and cooler running than an old one.

I can
ghost the image across the new hard drive, but to honest, my daugher
said I can ditch the old data and start again!

I would - upgrading versions of Windows is always more pain than
starting from scratch.

Unless there's a set of XP drivers for it on the HP website, check out
the hardware list in Win98 before taking it apart - it's likely that
everything inside will be supported by the WinXP install given its
age, but particularly the names of the audio, video and networking kit
is well worth having in case of problems.

Cheers - Jaimie

I think drivers could be a significant problem. A machine of this age is likely to have hardware in it for which no XP/Win2k drivers were ever written. I don't remember seeing what the processor speed is, but even with a lot more memory (256 is only just enough for basic use in my view) it may crawl even if you get XP onto it. I've just rebuilt a 600MHz laptop with Win2K when someone had "upgraded" it to XP - it just wasn't useable. Memory is scarce for this elderly Vaio, and what's out there is expensive, so I've taken it to 192Mb (64Mb plus a new 128Mb card: max is a measly 256Mb) and it runs Win2K acceptably, albeit rather slowly when Comodo firewall is running.

In my view, it might be worth loading Win2K on your laptop, but I'd follow Jamie's good advice and check the HP site for compatible drivers. If they aren't there, I'd just reload W98, or even ME if you can get it. ME is much derided, but I've found it more stable than W98, it has more native drivers, and it has System Restore. It also runs well on much less beefy platforms than are needed for Win2K or XP.

Alternatively, I was pleasantly surprised at how nice Puppy Linux was when I tried it (runs from the CD, so you can try it without commitment). See:
http://www.rickmaybury.com/bootpages/boot07/499.htm

I wouldn't spend much money or even time on your old box - laptop prices have come down tremendously, and £50 put towards extra memory in a cheap new machine may be better spent.

Phil, London
.

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