Upgrading a laptop you haven't bought yet

I am totally inexperienced when it comes to installing parts on a laptop (I did upgrade RAM and install a ZIP drive on a desktop once). Anyway, I have a couple questions about upgrading a laptop. I will probably do these upgrades right after buying a new one.

1) HDD to SSD
All of the laptops I'm considering come pre-loaded with Windows 7. If I want to swap out the OEM HDD for a SSD, how do I keep from losing one of my licenses. [note: last I knew, preloaded copies of Win are for that machine only, and are non-transferable. I believe you used to get a spare license in case your HDD crashes...if that's still true, I don't want to burn one just b/c I upgrade the HDD]

2) DDR3 RAM
If a laptop only offers PC3-8500 DDR3 SDRAM 1067MHz...is that the only RAM I can use for upgrades? I would want to move to DDR3 at 1333MHz if possible, though I am assuming the chipset or something else probably prevents that. However, I sometimes see laptops where you can chose between the 1067 or 1333, so maybe it is possible.

Note that I haven't made a final decision on my new laptop yet, in fact these considerations may play a small role in deciding what to buy.

 

probably wont get far with the higher clocked ram..
chipset probably wont support 1333...

 

that's right, your chipset will just downclock the 1333mhz to 1066 (unless your getting an i7, then I think it can use it). either way there is no preformance difference.

your right that Windows 7 is locked to that machine, but not to the hard drive. If you want to use the licence that comes with the machine, simply make the recovery disks if they don't already come with the computer. switch out the hard disk, slide your SSD in, and install windows using the recovery disks, done! it's really easy I've done it prob. 3 times in the last couple of months for various reasons.

good luck!

 

I am planning on i7 unless a I find a sweet deal on C2D on Black Friday. I know I saw Dell offering both speeds of DDR3 RAM on the Studio XPS 16 when they first offered it up for order with the i7. I saw it on an i7 machine on Xoticpc too. I'm sure they aren't offering the same model with 2 different chip sets, so what do I look for to know if I can upgrade from 1067 to 1333?

Also, maybe I was thinking of my old MS Office 2003 that came with 2 licenses, but one burns with the HDD if it fails. Anyway, then do I have to coordinate my SSD selection with chipset?

 

Anything with a conventional mobile C2D setup won't let you run memory faster than 1066MHz. An i7 should let you run 1333MHz memory, but you really should not base your purchase on memory speed because you won't notice any difference between the two. Period.

SSDs (good SSDs at least) can be used anywhere where a conventional 2.5" SATA drive can be used. It's chipset agnostic.

 

So is 1333MHz just a marketing thing or a useless but necessary stepping stone in the race up the performance ladder? If it is just a stepping stone, will there be higher speed DDR3 in a year that would go onto a PM55 chipset (or is it more complicated than just the chipset?)

I tend to use my laptops for a long time, I want to make sure I am getting something that is great today and can get meaningfully bumped in an upgrade 1-2 years down the road. So if I end up with i7+SSD it must have DDR3 RAM and invariably comes with mid-to-high level GPU. I guess at that point, my only upgrade would be going from 4GB RAM to 8 GB RAM (and maybe larger+faster SSD). Unless of course I end up with ENVY15 which can go to 16GB RAM. I'm guessing 16GB RAM is not really useful today for most users since everyone else is still capped at 8GB. However, I wish my 5 year old computer would have allowed me to go beyond its max RAM of 1GB since I now regularly get warnings from WinXP about needing to increase virtual memory while I'm multitasking.

Good to know, I'm favoring the Intel 80GB X-25M for now. Do you have a personal preference?

 

I wouldn't call 1333MHz memory a "marketing thing" or a "necessary stepping stone". It's just faster memory. If you bench it, you will see bigger figures than 1066MHz memory; it's just not anything you'd notice unless you're going some really memory intensive tasks. The general gist is that more memory will always be better than faster memory.

I'm using an 80GB X25-M. Works great.