How would be the best way to upgrade my lap-top computer? Or where could I take it, that wasn't overprised.?

Question

My laptop needs an upgrade, but I don't have a lot to spend.

Answer 1

Depends on what you mean by "upgrade".  In most cases it is cheaper to buy a better computer which will have all components matched.  The only "upgrade" you as a user can reliably do is to increase the RAM which is pretty inexpensive and probably gives you the most bang for the buck.  

Answer 2

On a typical latop, there are only going to be 2 options for "upgrade"

1. Memory

2. Hard drive

What is it that you want upgraded?  Upgrading the memory is simply a matter of removing 2 or 4 screws, snapping out the old memory and snapping in the newer higher capacity memory.  It's safe, simple, and takes less than 10 minutes.  You can find out what kind of memory it takes by running the "memory calculator" at http://www.crucial.com

Depending on how much RAM you already have, and what operating system you are running, increasing your RAM can help performance.

If you are out of hard drive space, replacing the hard drive isn't particularly hard, usually a few screws, slide out the old one, a few more screws, take the old one out of the "tray" put the new one in in the same position, put the screws back in, slide it back into the laptop, and it's installed, HOWEVER you will then need to re-install your operating system, transfer old files etc...  OR you can duplicate the old hard drive to the new one which takes an external USB drive adapter and some software.  

Upgrading anything else in most laptops is not practical or cost-effective... In fact, if you are going to pay someone to transfer the data from the old hard drive, install windows etc... it's most likely not worth the price... You'll end up spending $100 on the drive, and $200 on the labor, and for $400 you can get a new laptop that is 10X faster than your old one.

Answer 3

Dokiel do you just need more memory to speed it up because that is easy for you to do yourself?  If your laptop is about 4 years old it might have less than 1GB of memory.  You can check it.  Look in Control Panel and System - see where it says RAM.  You can go to www.crucial.com and the site will check your laptop and tell you what memory you need.  Then you can order it from there.

http://www.crucial.com/store/drammemory....

Answer 4

It would be helpful to have a model, because if its about 2 years old its fairly cheap to buy parts on ebay to upgrade it.