- Upgrade a laptop with SSD drive and more ram - thoughts

dee1949

Have a friend with 2 Dell Precision M4400 workstation/laptops. One is Core 2 Duo 3ghz, the other Core 2 Duo with 2.67gz. Both have 4gb's of memory. He loves them and never had a problem. He does photo and video editing, and internet surfing. What can he expect to gain by upgrading to a SSd hard drive for windows? ...and then adding a regular SATA hard drive in the tray replacement for the dvd drive.??? Thinking about 80gb SSD drive for windows. Then using interchangeable drives in the esata dvd replacement tray.He would then upgrade to 8gb total memory. Any thoughts appreciated.
Also a source for reasonable priced and brand of SSD drives. Also source for cheap 4gb sticks of ram?

Thanks in advance.

dee1949

...below is a review of the Dell Precision M4400. It has a good enough video card with 512mb ram.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Dell-Precision-M4400-Notebook.11959.0.html

dee1949

... was suggested to go to this website. gives an insight to advantages of ssD UPGRADE. IS IT WORTH risking buying a used one. wear factor??

http://lifehacker.com/5586733/how-to-take-full-advantage-of-your-solid-state-drive

dee1949

DSkip wrote: »

First thought is make sure the motherboard can support the extra RAM. Most laptops topped out at 4 GB around the Core 2 era, so it could be a complete waste of $ to add more. The laptop hard drives are slow as hell, so I'd imagine it would give a good boost to performance. I think he would be better off getting a 256 or 512 GB SSD though - they can be found for $100-150 and it makes them more future-proof. From someone with a 60 GB HD on my main rig, 80 just isn't enough. Even 120 would be a better idea.

... any thoughts on a cheap 60 or 80gb to experiment with? ...any cheap brands to play with.

westmassguy

Upgraded a Dell Latitude, same era, Core 2. Added 128GB SS HD, 4GB RAM, Windows 7 64bit. 3.2GB is the most Windows will see. It's a motherboard limitation. Looked for updated BIOS, but mine had the latest. Older machines sometimes had a memory setting, which would allow the OS to see and use all available RAM, but the Dell BIOS are pretty much a joke. Everything is locked down.

EndersShadow

dee1949 wrote: »

... risking buying a used one. wear factor??

I bought both my SSD's used from HardOCP's forum. Like all things there is a risk of buying from the wrong person. That said I paid 60 bucks for both my 120 gig HDD's IIRC and installed one in my laptop (runs longer on the battery and much faster now) and one in my desktop (faster boot) so I'd say it "might" be worth it to buy used.

Personally some good brands are Corsair, Samsung, Kingston, Intel (but you pay through the nose for them).

I wouldnt worry too much about the SSD's specs. Likely your going to be motherboard limited by transfer rates not SSD limited. Just make sure its from a reliable manufacture and has enough space for you.

My desktop I did what your buddy wants, I put the OS and programs on the SSD, and my documents, picture, video, etc on regular hard drives.

If speed is an issue have him look at standard hard drives that are 10,000 rpm rather than the standard 7200. Will result in faster time when loading pictures, saving to those hard drives, etc.

billbillw

I have two laptops from the same era. Core 2 Duo. I put inexpensive SSDs in both and they both run fabulous with 4GB RAM (Windows 7 Pro). He can expect sub-30 second boot times, quicker program loading, etc. I use both still pretty heavily. One is hooked to my 2-ch system to stream FLAC audio via Foobar from my NAS. The other is used often for travel when I just need to access internet, browse/edit photos, keep up with Quicken, etc. They are both capable of all but the most heavy computer tasks (ie: video coding or gaming).

dee1949

...thank you guys.