Need Help Deciding To Upgrade Laptop Or Just Buy A New One

I bought my laptop for school about 2 years ago ( HP Pavilion dv2000) and I'm not sure if its time for an upgrade or just flat out replacing it. What I would like to do is put of 2 gigs RAM in it and possibly upgrade the OS. Let me know what you guys think though. Heres the important Specs

HP Pavilion dv2000
Operating System: Windows Xp Home (SP3)
Processor: AMD Turion 64x 2 1.6GHz
RAM: 1GB
HDD: 100GB (93.1GB to be exact)
Graphic Card: GeForce Go 6150

 

Depends on what your using it for/how much money you have to buy new.

Its a pretty decent system, and with the 2gb of ram it should be great. I'd stick with xp though, and worry about a new os when you buy a new laptop.

 

I'll be using it for moderate gaming and normal use really... I'll be taking the money I'm saving from this and getting a PS3...

How long of an estimate do you think I would be good for after putting 2 more gigs in this laptop? And is there any other little things that I can do to tweak the performance over all?

I'm sure the OS is 32-bit so if I put 4GB in it I wouldn't be getting its full potential that way... would 3GB be just fine? And how do I find out for sure what bit my OS is?

 

I you bought it 2 years ago, it for sure is a 32-bit OS...
Now, you question... with a laptop, RAM is practically your only way to upgrade. Can't change the GPU, and after 2 years I doubt a CPU change would even be possible.
However, having 2 GB Ram with WinXP will improve your experience, especially in multitasking, video/image editing, etc. But if your may concern is gaming, than upgrading the RAM would be futile. And on a sidenote... for a 2 years old laptop, be sure that it can actually accept more that 2 GB (many can't).
On the other hand, why would you upgrade the OS? And where would you go from here? Vista, Linux?
If your choice is Vista, be prepared to suffer, even with 2 GB of Ram...Linux would be fine, but it's a whole new ballgame of a OS.
So if I were you, upgrading the RAM to the max would be my #1 priority, it's dirt-cheap, and makes a difference. And I would stay away from Vista, just because your hardware is older and you may encounter compatibility issues.

 

I was thinking 64-bit Xp (if possible?)

How much RAM would you suggest I get and how do I find out whats the max my computer can take (RAM wise).

 

OK, personally, I see no advantage going from 32-bit XP to 64-bit XP, right now that is. That only current advantage of a 64-bit OS for home users is the possibility of going beyond 4 GB of RAM. (For example, Vista 64-bit home premium can access up to 8 GB, Vista 64-bit Ultimate more, Vista 32-bit home premium up to 4 GB)
So, 32-bit OS doesn't recognize more than 4 GB of RAM (so going beyond that is useless)... your OS actually displays a bit less (around 3.2-3.5 GB) with 4 GB installed. With XP, 2 GB is pretty much all you need (unless, like I said before, you do a lot of stuff at once).

Second, to find out which RAM to get, go to www.crucial.com... there you can make the site scan your system and suggest the different options OR manually enter the manufacturer and model of your system and end up with the same results.
You can also go to your laptop manufacturer's site and try to find the info there.

 

Your laptop is plenty fast. I'll would just upgrade the ram to 2GB. The only reason to get a new laptop would be for features and not speed.

 

When you say moderate gaming, what games are you talking about? It depends on what you have in mind when you say 'moderate gaming' but for what I have in mind your laptop wouldn't be good for anything but light gaming.

For an general purpose laptop it's plenty fine but it's not a gaming machine.

 

upgrading your current laptop's OS to VISTA will cause you to loose any speed you may gain by doing the other upgrades...

if the laptop is still in good shape and does what you need.. then i would just upgrade the RAM and enjoy the speed of XP..

my laptop came w/ VISTA and could barely run the OS.... but after "upgrading" to XP PRO i have a speedy little laptop that only cost me $500 (price includes the CPU, RAM, & DVD Bruner UPGRADES)


just my $0.02,
bigO

 

Well i guess you could say "light gaming" because it was either I buy a new comp (the HP dv5z series @ around $950-1000 with upgrades) or upgrade the one I have (2gb Corsair @ $41) and get a ps3 and just game on that. But I made up my mind and I'm gunna get the ps3. Thanks guys for all ur input

 

Is there any other little tweaks or tips any of you guys could give me to speed it up a lil more? Would it be better to reformat the internal HDD and just buy an external HDD and store all my programs and software onto that?

 

Here are some tweaks:

Go to start, than go to the run command and type in MSCONFIG,
go into the startup and serives tabs and shut off all programs, services and software which you are not using. That will free up a lot of your cpu, memory and harddrive cycles, making your laptop run faster and more efficiently.

Since you have XP, your memory usage at startup should be no more than 300Mb, of it is, than your memory is not allocated properly, and you need to clean up the registry with msconfig.

The amount of files on your system does not slow the computer down, it is the amount of software you install which you allow to run everytime the system boots, which slows it down. With msconfig you can speed it back up again by shutting off the programs you do not use.

K-TRON

 

Upgrading 1GB to 2GB in XP does not make any difference unless you actually use 1GB. Very few people actually need more than 1GB in XP. You can check how much memory you use by pressing ctrl-alt-del at any time.

My upgrade tips:
1. Do a clean install with XP, prefreably XP SP3.
2. Get a fast harddrive. If your laptop has SATA, you can get a Hitachi 7K200 for $99. If your laptop has ATA go for a Samsung HM160HC.

 

This laptop upgraded to 2GB ram should run fine, and you can even upgrade to Windows Vista if you wanted which wouldn't have any diverse effects as long as you install SP1 too.

I had a laptop same specification and it run Vista HP 32Bit no problems!

 

Between 200 and 300Mb if you're running an antivirus and a Firewall, otherwise it should be around 120Mb

You could also upgrade the CPU if you run havy applications such as photo and vedio editing or 3D and CAD