Need help upgrading laptop.

[nsimo86]

After much debating whether or not to buy a new budget laptop, netbook, or upgrade my older laptop I have decided on the latter. It is a toshiba satellite L25-S119 with a 1.5ghz celeron M, 60gig HDD, and the radeon xpress 200m chipset.

The main problem is the laptop has terrible cooling and the HDD is the main culprit, therefore I am considering replacing it with a SSD. Has anyone else done this? Is it worth it? What connection type is needed?

I'm also planning on upgrading the CPU to a Pentium M. I am having trouble finding much information on the chipset. The AMD website only states that it offers support for Celeron M, Pentium M, and Pentium 4 processors. Will it support the 533mhz FSB Pentium M's?

Keep in mind it'll be used just for office applications and internet.

 

[frozenlead]

If you're just going on the internet and using office, I don't recommend you upgrade anything. There isn't any reason to (unless some software is making your machine really slow) or unless you simply ran out of space on your hard disk. Other than that, your notebook is fine for it's purpose.

 

[nsimo86]

no it sucks, it can barely handle having two windows open and it runs extremely hot. I think i found the answer to my own question anyways, I need a IDE interface SSD and I'm pretty sure any pentium M will work.

 

[frozenlead]

I think you're having a mishap with software. You've just got too much stuff running you don't need. What OS are you running? How much memory do you have installed?

That machine should fly in XP and Vista with the right amount of RAM.

Also, since your notebook is a few years old, consider taking it out into the garage and blowing your heatsinks and vents out with compressed air. That'll quell the heat quite a bit, in some cases.

 

[nsimo86]

I'm very competent with computers and nothing is running in the background.

Keep in mind I bought this laptop 3 years ago for like $400 and that included a printer and wireless router, its not exactly high quality. The low clocked celeron m with its 1mb L2 cache is just too slow. Granted I only have 784mb ram but i am gonna upgrade to 2gb. I picked up a 1.86 ghz pentium m and I am planning on cleaning out the dust when i install it. It has always ran hot and I can tell most of the heat is coming from where the HDD is.

Mainly I wanted to know if anyone has had experience putting a SSD into a notebook.

I'm looking at this one right now
http/www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820208445 and it seems to have good reviews with people running their OS on it even though its not recommended.

 

[nsimo86]

Oh and its running windows xp, I just did a clean refresh about 6 months ago.

 

[frozenlead]

If it's on XP, it should certainly fly. I've had XP run great with 384MB of PC100 ram and Pentium II's. Not to intrude on what I'm sure you have as fine skill as installing OSs, but it should really run like no problem.

 

[nsimo86]

to most people it would probably be ok, but it pales in comparison to my gaming rig and it drives me crazy. I'm thinking between the pentium m and its higher cache and upping the ram to 2gigs it should fly.