Is it worth the time and money to buy a new laptop?

[Kareshnaka]

Hello, I have an aging hp laptop and I am wondering if its a good time to upgrade. I use my laptop for basic web browsing, essays and anything i want to keep portable that may be important. I have heavily upgraded my laptop from its original stock config:
dual core amd p540 turion II @2.5ghz(used to have amd v140 1 core@2.3ghz), 8gb ddr3 1066 mhz ram from 2gb(its weird, but windows detects it as 1600mhz ram),
ati radeon 4250
250gig 5400rpm hard drive (almost full)

I have an ipad mini for really basic things and a custom build pc for gaming and more resource intensive programs. I can almost live without my laptop; the only couple things that are holding me back is that the ipad doesn't have flash, and it cant hold that much files without connecting to the cloud. my budget is only $500. Would I get a justifiable increase in computing power by buying a laptop at this range? or should i keep my laptop until i can muster up enough money for something better? thank for your help in advance.

Ps. my laptop's trackpad is broken and the battery has lost alot of its capacity; only around 2hours of battery life.

 

[mosedavid1]

Personally i would keep the laptop, look into how much a replacement trackpad is and if the laptop is sluggish, check out some live distributions of linux. You don't have to install them, they just run from a bootable cd/dvd usb or sd card. I wouldn't spend much more on it though. With your muliti pc setup.... If you play games on a tower pc, have an ipad mini for mobile stuff (maybe you have a smart phone too?) I don't really see where a laptop is important in these cloud based times unless you want gaming on it. Having a laptop just for flash is a bit pointless unless your a flash developer that travels

I have a really old (10 years!) AS rock (MV Mobius) laptop that, along the way, I upgraded (memory). Eventually I did buy another laptop but I mended (replaced keyboard) the AS Rock, put a quicker operating system on (Mandriva Linux) and it has served me well as a backup pc when something has gone tits up. With XP and all the service packs it crawled but with Linux on it it was usable. The specs of that are 1.4 celeron, 2gb ram, absolutely rubbish battery (20 mins if your lucky). Basically it is a netbook!. My point being is that question whether you even need a laptop in your setup and then just make the most of what you've got. If and when you do buy, buy business class machines as they will be made better, have enhanced security features, waterproof keyboards etc. Sometimes you can get lucky. When I bought my new laptop (HP 4320s) it was a business class machine, discrete graphics but only cost me (2 years ago) equivalent of $470 ($620 with $150 cashback).

If your running out of hard disk space maybe a removable drive or a NAS is a better option. I can't think of a reason why you would need 250gb of files on your PC all the time unless they were game files.

BTW, your battery degrades by being warm all the time and constantly under load. If your plugged into the mains, remove the battery. Google it for more in depth look if you don't believe me.

 

[Kareshnaka]

I probably didn't describe my dilemma as good as i should have. I use my laptop for work(I am a web developer for small companies) and I need flash as well as a lot of windows only programs with me portable so I can show my client how their web page is going to be designed. My hard drive is almost full because of all the templates I have. I only have a business phone that i cant use as a personal phone. also, I need to take notes really quickly so I need a really good keyboard. I tried to use my ipad for notes with a bluetooth keyboard but those are really novelty in practice. What I really need in a laptop:

1.It needs to be light enough
2.it needs to have a decent proceesor(bare minimum is dual core @2.3ghz)
3.it need at least 8gb ram(I have ram sticks, so it only needs to support 8gb of ram and ill install it)
4.it needs to have a great battery life; at least 4 hours
5.it needs to have lots of storage so SSDs are out (I could install a higher storage HDD in it so not a dealbreaker)
6. intel hd 3000 graphics is the bare minimum for graphics I need for 3d models
7. It needs to have a good useable keyboard
8. all for around $500
Is this possible? Thank you for your time.