Upgrade old Dell or Purchase New Tablet?

[Wolfshadw]

Hey all,

Just looking for other opinions here.

I have an old Dell Inspiron E1505/6400 laptop. It's and old scratch and dent from the Dell Outlet that I purchased about six years ago. Now, the only thing I use it for is personal finances and game emulators.

The laptop has a dual-core 1.73GHz Intel Core2Duo processor, 1GB of RAM, and an NVidia Geforce 7300GT graphics card. It's also running Windows XP SP3.

On the down-side, internal wireless card and the second RAM slot are fried. I do have a USB wireless adapter, so I can connect to the Internet, but my concern is the amount of RAM. The specs of the system state a max 2GB (2x1GB) of RAM, but I've seen others state, online, that they've successfully run 4GB (2x2GB) in their systems (same model).

So here's my conundrum. Do I spend all of $25 and install 1x2GB of RAM and a copy of Windows 7 (legit) given that neither are officially supported or do I just go ahead and look forward to my ($400) ASUS Transformer Tablet?

I would note, the upgrade I can do this week. The replacement would take several months.

So... What would you do?

-Wolf sends

P.S. I've also run Windows 7 Upgrade Adviser and it did not show any major issues. Some old programs that I don't even use are no longer compatible.

 

[eatmypie]

I would just get something like an ultrabook/tablet. I currently own an acer one which I use for emails, and watching movies while I'm out and about. it runs nice and cool. I used to have an older i3 laptop from a few years ago, but this combo has worked out great for me. http/www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834314159

 

[Wolfshadw]

Still looking for inputs here, but we've run into a bit of a snag.

Apparently, the second (and last) RAM slot has now died. The LED POST Flash codes seem to point at no SO-DIMM installed, which just isn't true. So now, instead of getting a 1x2GB RAM module for ~$25, I'm looking at a new motherboard, which I've found for ~$30. I still have the 2x1GB RAM modules.

Of course, I've never replaced the motherboard on a laptop, but I did find a video.

So what do you think? Try to save the old Dell this week, or go without for the next couple of months until I can get the new tablet?

-Wolf sends

 

[eatmypie]

I would just save up, what ever caused your current board to fail will also cause the next to fail as well. Looking at ebay they have a lot of your same model laptops in as-is conditon saying that they won't start, so just save your money for a bit for something newer.