Looking to upgrade notebook
 

I picked up an OmnibookXE3 notebook and I am giving it to a friend so I want to upgrade it from 675mhz or so to something nice. I usually just get a new computer when it is behind, where to go to do this by myself? I am pretty tech savy.

There are a couple of outfits that upgrade notebooks, but it is usually very expensive. Max out the RAM and save your cash.

MisterNice

Probably not enough to upgrade an aging notebook.

Keep it at it's current speed and do what the previous poster said, just add more RAM.

Try Crucial.com and just max it out.

As MrFurious said, load up on RAM at crucial as they are consistently the cheapest and easiest to find your exact RAM type. I wouldnt put too much more into it beyond RAM but you will get your moneys worth from the RAM investment. IMO

Can you add a faster disk perhaps as well? I saw a noticeable improvement in performance when I replaced the 4200rpm drive in my Thinkpad with a 7200rpm drive.

Why bother, after adding a new drive and more ram you are out at least $450, for $300 more you can pick up a brand new machine :)

Not always. I have a Sony Viao 505 that is really small and light. A replacement would be a couple grand, maybe close to 3 grand. It may not be the fastest thing for windows but it works fine with Linux, which I have on there as well as windows. But the disk is real small. I was considering using it for mail (Outlook) in Windows and everything else in Linux. Are there good places to upgrade disc drives?

I had a similar situation with a nice but older Sony PCG-818 (PII 233MH I believe). I bought a new 20GB HDD for $100 on www.ebay.com and maxed out the RAM for $40 from www.crucial.com . It works far finer and far faster than ever before.

MisterNice

Keep in mind that if you up the speed of a HD, say from 4500rpm to 7200rpm, you usually take a hit in battery life. That is, unless your old HD wasn't that power efficient either.

Why, oh why, would you want to keep Outlook as a mail client if you can also run Linux?

The only 675MHz CPU I could find on Google was a Sparc64 :eek:

Keep in mind few older laptops will recognize hard drives over 32GB, and that workarounds are usually neither elegant nor reliable.

IMHO upgrades beyond a 20-30GB HD and 256/512MB RAM are not worth it for vintage machines.

P1 laptops are doomed by nonstandard RAM, an 8.4GB HD limitation, and a different mounting pattern for HD's.

Fair question. I think another one though is what would you suggest? Currently our Exchange Server Version doesnt support Ximian. That looks interesting but due to the server limitation I havent been able to try it. They are upgrading the Exchange Server to a version that will support Ximian soon (it was supposed to be done already). I will certainly give that a try. I am not aware of anything on any OS that gives the functionality of Outlook in an Exchange Server Environment. I am certainly willing to try other things as well and am open to suggestions.

As much as I support Linux (I run an ISP that depends on it) I really don't understand the "just use Linux" crowd. Have you really moved over to Linux? Do you really understand what it takes for a consumer to move completely from Windows to Linux?

Anyway, with Mozilla's email client running on Windows there really isn't a reason to move to Linux anyway.

Linux simply hasn't matured enough for it to be suitable for consumers.

GadgetFreak The only exchange conduit that I know is the Novell/Ximian offering. After I posted I must admit I thought "Exchange!", and it looks like I was right.

ScottC I agree that Linux is not suitable for you average end user, but GadgetFreak seems to be a more than tech savvy and happy with it, having moved over and only keeping Windoze for one app.

Personally, I use Apple Macs at home and keep an old dual boot W98 and SUSE Linux box for fun and the occaisional prog that must run on M$ :rolleyes: