Anything I can do?

Hi all,

I received a Toshiba Satellite L505D-LS5006 as a gift over the summer. It has an AMD Athlon II Dual Core M300 processor @ 2.00Ghz, and has a 320, 5400rpm hard drive with 3G of DDR2 memory installed.
It wasn't really what I wanted for a rig,but I didn't have the heart to tell them I
really wasn't too excited about it, and would have preferred to return it, and let me get something later.
That being said, other than maxing out the memory, and maybe swapping out to a bigger and higher rpm hard drive, is there much I can do to eke the most performance out of this thing that I can?
I don't think I'm going to be able to get anywhere in the ballpark of what I was looking at, but I guess I'd like to do what I can to at least watch videos if I want without the constant pause,buffering, etc...
Thanks,
4bz1d1a

 

Adding more RAM won't really help. Limiting factor in your notebook is the integrated graphics.

 

What programs do you run on your notebook?

It sounds like your notebook could use a good tune-up. What I would do first is a clean install of Windows; Toshiba notebooks come with a fair amount of bloatware/junk software. Let us know if you need help doing this.

To compliment that, upgrading to a faster hard drive will help your performance regardless of what you do. Consider a Hitachi 7K500 or Western Digital Scorpio Black; the 500GB models are around $70-80. They will be a significant upgrade from the pokey 320GB 5400RPM drive that came standard in your notebook.

 

With integrated graphics, adding RAM will help.

First, it will be running at its optimum speed in dual channel.

Second, if this notebook is running Win7x64

See:
Satellite L505D-LS5006


like in the above link, then even Windows can put it to good use (for prefetching, etc.).

While not a current Video card, it can certainly drive the 1366x768 screen good enough for video.

4bz1d1a, the 'constant buffering/pausing' is not due to the notebook - that must be your internet connection.

Try these steps to get your system up to speed:

See:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/6723837-post163.html


Good luck.

 

You got a great gift. Why be unhappy about it? A lot of people aren't as fortunate. Life is how you look at it. You might want to keep it mind.

As for watching movies, almost all graphics cards support movie playback, even HD content. I don't think watching movies is going to cause any issues. As for a hard drive, the Hitachi or WD are solid performers, but if you're looking for a performance bump with a lot of space, I'd suggest the Momentus XT. As Chaz noted a clean install will help boost performance. You can download a disc in the Windows forum if you need one. Almost any dual-core CPU bought today offers more than enough performance for general usage. Good luck and welcome to NBR.

 

I think he meant unhappy as it wasn't up to spec to which he/she desired.

I'm not saying it's a crappy laptop, it's one of the higher end entry level laptops. You could make a recovery disc, get a new hard drive and download PC Decrapfier and remove all the bloatware on the Toshiba. Even a 30-60 GB SSD would be a huge improvement.