Laptop Upgrades

Along with upgrading to Ulitmate, I also threw more hardware at my new lappie:

I upgraded the hard drive and memory (to 100MB and 2GB, respectively) and the performance specs bumped up as follows:

• Memory: 5.2
• Graphics: 3.0
• Hard disk: 5.0

The disk I installed is a 100GB/7200RPM Seagate Momentus 7200.1 ST910021AS (OEM). The RAM was 2 x 1GB Kensington KTH-ZD8000A/1G. Less than $200 from Newegg.

May seem like an excessive expense for a $500 laptop, but the perceptible improvements in performance have been worth it, IMO.

Second Vista system

I've just acquired an HP/Compaq F572US laptop from MicroCenter for less than $500, which I will continue to use with Vista.

System Specs:

• AMD Athlon 64 X2 TK-53 processor (dual core, 1.7GHz)
• nVidia nForce Go chipset, including G0 6150 graphics
• 1GB DDR2 (2 x 512MB SO-DIMM)
• 15.4" widescreen WXGA display (1280 x 800)
• 80GB 5400RPM SATA HDD
• DVD+/-RW DL

Vista Home Premium performance metrics out-of-box:

• Processors: 4.6
• Memory: 4.5
• Graphics: 2.9
• Gaming graphics: 2.4
• Primary HDD: 4.8

I'm not satisfied with the hardware on this just yet; it really needs a 7200RPM drive, and Vista craves 2GB or more RAM. I'll be upgrading everything in the next few days, and will post again with the results.

While I'm focusing more on the Vista-related aspects, another fellow has been keeping a blog about the hardware side of this laptop, which you can check out if you're more interested in that side of the equation: http://f572review.blogspot.com/