Hey you're from Calgary, how did you like the snow this morning?
Gonna go out to Panorama, Castle, Fernie, Loise or Sunshine tomorrow to take advantage, depends on who got the most overnight. [:mousemonkey]
lilsage :
Right now the only things that can be upgraded with any ease are the memory and the harddrive. Memory is easy... they tell you in the detailed specs from the manufacturer what it can and can not handle.
LOL! [:mousemonkey:1]
Wasn't originally laughing at you, just laughing at how true that USED to be, but since you are experiencing the same difficulty I'm about to detail I laugh at you a bit as well for that statement because you should know better from your own experience.
Most people who have tried to upgrade a laptop shipping with less than 2GB of memory to the above 2GB that the MoBo and Chipset SHOULD support. Most of us have had major issues, which are primarily artificial BIOS restriction issues. For me I found how to fix it while tech support spent hours with me over 4 increasingly better quality matched sticks of memory (finaly going to Mushkin matched sticked with sequential serials [not all are sequential when you buy matched]). For me when I found out and reported back to tech support, even they didn't know you needed to do that. Anywhoo, unfortunately memory's not as easy as it used to be to upgrade. Thankfully the 4GB sticks aren't supported by most current chipsets so anyone who does their homework won't waste their time on them and will be getting dedicated laptops for them, but I hope that mfrs don't artificially continue to block upgrades in BIOS, because I'm not paying a 400% markup on an already $300-400 stick of memory.
HD is harder... that one is a bit more of a gamble... need to ensure have the right kind of connection Ultra ATA/100, SATA, SATA 1.5Gb, SATA 3.0 Gb... then there is NCQ... etc.
Actually all you need is ATA / SATA / SCSI all th other stuff doesn't prevent the upgrade they are added features which if not supported just don't function. With memory you still have DDR, DDR2, X number of Pins, Speed (which does matter to at least work unlike RPM) and then more subtle issues like voltages, densities and arrangement (some chipsets don't like high density modules nor double sided sticks). I'd say memory is much harder to get right than HDD, but HDD is a more pain physically to remove and add (sometimes needing a special cage like me).
The reason for the two SATA's which most people would say is the same is because some won't give you any more information than the connector... not the capability.
Yeah but that's like talking avout timmings for memory, it matter very little, running 150MB/s or 300MB/s to the buffer at burst will make extremely little difference in current drives, current enterprise and future consumer SSDs are the only ones able to really come close to saturating the interface.
My source is the fact I have been hunting to upgrade my HP dv6235 laptop... Spent a significant amount of time looking to going past 2Gb of RAM (Still trying to find out what exactly sets that limit on a laptop since newer ones are showing higer max capacity) and wanting to go past my little 120 HD... hoping this machine can handle 7200 RPM 250 Gb 2.5" drives...
The limit is probably artificial.
Now the folowing is a 'use at your own risk' suggestion, do alot of research first and then decide if more memory is worth frying your laptop. Check to see if there's a BIOS update and try it, but my experience with a friend is that Toshiba has it hard coded into their model number BIOS. If that model was never offered with 4GB when you bought it, then you will likely never get above it, otherwise look for the internal model # that was given to the 4GB one (likely only a digit different than yours) and then see what people's experiences are.
However, as with what I am doing... all esle fails, ask the Manufacturer. They may even have some info on their website about what you're looking for.
Unlikely, and Toshiba was totally unhelpful about that memory issue for someone else I was chating with about them (glad I bought the Fujitsu instead, HP and Toshiba were my other two options). BEST resource is other users either in the Toshiba forums or other tech/laptop forums.
And while most laptops aren't 'very' upgradable they are far more so than before, and most of the restrictions are artificial limits placed on them by the redistributor (DELL, Fujitsu, HP, Toshiba) not the original hardware mfr. (AMD, intel, nV, WD). Treat a laptops like an intergrated mobo, some feature you can upgrade, some you can't. And while you say we may get a more upgradable future, that will come from more barebones mfrs like Clevo and ACERS/ASUS than from people like DELL and Toshiba who are restricting user upgrades more and more.
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