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Upgrading a laptop?
That's one of the things I usually advise friends NOT to do. There's a certain cost effectiveness to desktop upgrades, and of course, any fumble fingers can work on a modern desktop computer with few worries.
Naturally, I rarely have enough sense to take my own advice.
Last February I got a great deal on a Sony laptop with Athlon 1 GHz processor, 20GB hard disk, 256 MB of ram, DVD/CDRW combo drive, and a pretty decent 14" display. Including a nice large carrying case which is normally a $100 accessory (actually big enough to carry two laptops in separate compartments plus some accessories, like a portable MO or HD drive) the total price was only $1299. It came with XP Home, which for the most part worked pretty well, as well as a variety of accessory programs for DVD, CD burning, plus a copy of Adobe Photoshop Elements, one of the best "budget" programs for image work on the market.
The easy part was a memory upgrade from 256MB to 512 MB back in April. Normally, I recommend buying a laptop configured as you want it, because the upgrades are expensive compared with a desktop. I got a pretty decent price on the memory, so that wasn't too painful.
Last weekend came the painful, stomach acid part- I found a great deal on IBM 48 GB TravelStar HD drive, and I could get it bundled with a copy of XP Professional at a low price. This is where the fun stuff started.
Replacing a hard disk in a laptop is a little more of a production than for a desktop.
Below, you can see a picture of my laptop with the power strip and keyboard removed, to where you can at least see where the HD resides.
Right off the bat, if you don't have good eyesight and some jewlers screwdrivers (and I don't mean one of those cr*ppy RS sets, I mean a good set), as far as working working on a laptop goes, as Hugh Grant once said, "Fuggetaboudit!"
Access to this stage is achieved by removing a very small screw on the left side of the speaker/power switch strip, and sliding the strip to the right, then lifting off. The keyboard is held down by a single screw fastening it to the front frame bracket; after taking it out, you can slide the keyboard forward, then flip it over.
Looking a little closer, this is what you'll see.
The HD is nestled in between the processor and the DVD/CDRW drive, resting in what appears to be a steel subframe. Removing four teeny tiney screwws will allow you to unplug the HD subframe from the MB, and remove the hard disk.
The 48 GB TravelStar is a two platter drive, and is 1/8" thicker than the original Hitachi drive. The new drive has enough space in the carrier, but the carrier mouning holes for the drive attachment are placed for the smaller drive, and have to be routed out a bit for the location the larger drive requires. A dremel tool worked well for this.
Once I reassembled this, and put the system recovery CD in the DVD/CDRW drive, pressing F2 brought up the BIOS and a CD boot, and "recovery" of the HD with an automated FDISK, format, and install process was very straight forward. Kudo's to Sony for how well their software works- Dell and others could take a few lessons from them.
However, all was not well in Mudville, because no matter what I did, XP Professional would not install as an upgrade on top of the Sony customized XP. After four tries, I said, screw this, and installed over the Sony XP instalation, which had a few specific side affects. But it did get the job done.
I had to install the sony drivers manually, though note XP Pro did have all the Power management stuff built in and working OK on the laptop. It also had a workable ATI Rage Mobility video driver. I did install updates to these drivers, and one for the LCD display, plus all the current web updates.
Unfortunatley, at this point with a "non Sony" XP, the Application recovery disk doesn't recognize this as a Sony system, and I had to install my own DVD player and my own copy of Photoshop Elements, plus of course, all my application software.
Many hours later, as I'm writing this update from my laptop, everything is working fine, and I do like the greater network flexibility and functionality of the XP Pro version (which is what I run on all my other systems).
Moral of the story? It can be done, but it aint easy. Caveat Emptor; proceed at your own risk. I did have a few sweaty palmed moments during this, but it turned out OK.
PS: The reason I didn't buy one of the higher end Sony GRX Intel systems instead , is because they can only use an extra battery by swapping out the DVD/CDRW drive- and of course, I want the extra battery so I can watch DVD's on those long airline flights I'm on too often! Dumb design move on Sony's part; but very common with other companies, too! The Athon series FXA unit I bought pulls out the floppy, not the DVD/CDRW to use a second battery, so I can watch long movies or work for 4-6 hours while still having the optical drive installed.
Regards,
Jon
Earth First!
_______________________________
We'll screw up the other planets later....
That's one of the things I usually advise friends NOT to do. There's a certain cost effectiveness to desktop upgrades, and of course, any fumble fingers can work on a modern desktop computer with few worries.
Naturally, I rarely have enough sense to take my own advice.
Last February I got a great deal on a Sony laptop with Athlon 1 GHz processor, 20GB hard disk, 256 MB of ram, DVD/CDRW combo drive, and a pretty decent 14" display. Including a nice large carrying case which is normally a $100 accessory (actually big enough to carry two laptops in separate compartments plus some accessories, like a portable MO or HD drive) the total price was only $1299. It came with XP Home, which for the most part worked pretty well, as well as a variety of accessory programs for DVD, CD burning, plus a copy of Adobe Photoshop Elements, one of the best "budget" programs for image work on the market.
The easy part was a memory upgrade from 256MB to 512 MB back in April. Normally, I recommend buying a laptop configured as you want it, because the upgrades are expensive compared with a desktop. I got a pretty decent price on the memory, so that wasn't too painful.
Last weekend came the painful, stomach acid part- I found a great deal on IBM 48 GB TravelStar HD drive, and I could get it bundled with a copy of XP Professional at a low price. This is where the fun stuff started.
Replacing a hard disk in a laptop is a little more of a production than for a desktop.
Below, you can see a picture of my laptop with the power strip and keyboard removed, to where you can at least see where the HD resides. Right off the bat, if you don't have good eyesight and some jewlers screwdrivers (and I don't mean one of those cr*ppy RS sets, I mean a good set), as far as working working on a laptop goes, as Hugh Grant once said, "Fuggetaboudit!"
Access to this stage is achieved by removing a very small screw on the left side of the speaker/power switch strip, and sliding the strip to the right, then lifting off. The keyboard is held down by a single screw fastening it to the front frame bracket; after taking it out, you can slide the keyboard forward, then flip it over.
Looking a little closer, this is what you'll see.
The HD is nestled in between the processor and the DVD/CDRW drive, resting in what appears to be a steel subframe. Removing four teeny tiney screwws will allow you to unplug the HD subframe from the MB, and remove the hard disk.
The 48 GB TravelStar is a two platter drive, and is 1/8" thicker than the original Hitachi drive. The new drive has enough space in the carrier, but the carrier mouning holes for the drive attachment are placed for the smaller drive, and have to be routed out a bit for the location the larger drive requires. A dremel tool worked well for this.
Once I reassembled this, and put the system recovery CD in the DVD/CDRW drive, pressing F2 brought up the BIOS and a CD boot, and "recovery" of the HD with an automated FDISK, format, and install process was very straight forward. Kudo's to Sony for how well their software works- Dell and others could take a few lessons from them.
However, all was not well in Mudville, because no matter what I did, XP Professional would not install as an upgrade on top of the Sony customized XP. After four tries, I said, screw this, and installed over the Sony XP instalation, which had a few specific side affects. But it did get the job done.
I had to install the sony drivers manually, though note XP Pro did have all the Power management stuff built in and working OK on the laptop. It also had a workable ATI Rage Mobility video driver. I did install updates to these drivers, and one for the LCD display, plus all the current web updates.
Unfortunatley, at this point with a "non Sony" XP, the Application recovery disk doesn't recognize this as a Sony system, and I had to install my own DVD player and my own copy of Photoshop Elements, plus of course, all my application software.
Many hours later, as I'm writing this update from my laptop, everything is working fine, and I do like the greater network flexibility and functionality of the XP Pro version (which is what I run on all my other systems).
Moral of the story? It can be done, but it aint easy. Caveat Emptor; proceed at your own risk. I did have a few sweaty palmed moments during this, but it turned out OK.
PS: The reason I didn't buy one of the higher end Sony GRX Intel systems instead , is because they can only use an extra battery by swapping out the DVD/CDRW drive- and of course, I want the extra battery so I can watch DVD's on those long airline flights I'm on too often! Dumb design move on Sony's part; but very common with other companies, too! The Athon series FXA unit I bought pulls out the floppy, not the DVD/CDRW to use a second battery, so I can watch long movies or work for 4-6 hours while still having the optical drive installed.
Regards,
Jon
Earth First!
_______________________________
We'll screw up the other planets later....
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