What upgrades on a Compaq notebook

Hey everyone first time post here. I am gettting a Compaq Presario 700z notebook computer for a good price. The specs on it are:

With 1.3-GHz Mobile AMD Athlon 4 1500+,
256MB SDRAM
20GB hard drive
DVD drive
14.1-inch XGA TFT display
Microsoft Windows XP Home

Now my neighbor is selling it to me for only $300. I know this is a good deal since im only 17 and dont want to spend $2000 on one. Everything is in good working order and there are no problems with it. Now I would like to do some updating to it. I am going to start with adding a Linksys wireless adapter to it to hook it up to the network on our house. Now I am definitely going to update the SDRAM on it but am not sure on how much im getting yet? Finally, I want to upgrade my graphics card. I am looking into the ati graphics cards and was looking at the all in wonder card. Will these updates improve the graphics and speed of my computer and if you have any other tips will you please share them with me.

Thanks for your time,
Jeff

 

Memory and Hard drive are the only thing that you can upgrade on it. Anything else, you can't do, due to the onboard graphics chipset is not replacable, along with the processor.

 

You can automatically check your existing memory and find out what you need here

http://www.**********.com/RAM.htm

 

I would trust a site such as Crucial.com or Memory.com, then that particular site, due to Crucial is able to warranty the RAM and they are able to match the proper RAM for a machine, and cheaper then a private agent such as a computer repair person.

 

Same difference...the site links Memory Giant and also warrants the info

 

Why send a person through a third party link to get to another site? The only concern is that a user may pick up a Viral bug by going through a third party site that a person has sent them to.

Please always post the direct site link such as http://www.crucial.com http://www.memory.com or like memorygiant.com (never heard of them, but have heard of memory.com and crucial and have used both to get memory from).

 

@ rtminc...If you want to post links to your website when offering assistance then contact the owners of this site for advertising rates. Otherwise, posting the link as you have been is considered spamming.

 

Personally if I were looking to buy a compaq, and I wouldn't I would go to the hp site with the model number, and get the specs sheet that goes with the computer. Then I would find out what memory the system calls for. Then I would go to Newegg and buy the memory I needed, and while I was at it I would pick up a bigger drive (if this is to be your main computer) 60 or 80 gb should do fine. I would think that a 512 stick would work well, and with the 256 you would get 768mb which is respectable. $300 is a bit much for this system, I wouldn't buy it for more then 250 but thats not what we are talking about.

If you where unaware for any reason, compaq was bought out by hp so now hp supports compaq stuff.

Hope this helps.

 

Most laptops already have two sticks in them Sunscreen. Actually if you look around, you can usually get better deals elsewhere then Newegg, and memory is one of those that you can usually get a better deal over at Crucial.

 

I will go and take a look at crucial for memory deals, but the compaqs I have worked on have all come with one stick, usualy a 256. older ones had a single stick of 128.

 

Desktops and most of the Centrino's will come with only one stick, but the majority will come with two.

 

Now I did take a look at newegg and at crucial. (I should be doing work that pays money of course but...)

NEWEGG: Crucial Ballistix 1GB (2 x 512MB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Unbuffered System Memory Model BL2KIT6464Z402 - Retail $115.00

Crucial website: DDR PC3200 • CL=3 • UNBUFFERED • NON-ECC • DDR400 • 2.6V • 64Meg x 64 $121.99

Even with the 4.21 for shipping newegg charges you are still getting it cheaper, and I', sure you have to pay for shipping with crucial.

So as usual (not all the time) Newegg is the winner.

 

Now before I am quickly corrected again, I do understand the sticks I just quoted are desktop sticks, and not laptop. I did not want to find a couple sticks of laptop ram and risk the person looking at this post to go pick it up without finding out what it uses.
Now as for the desktop having one, and laptops using two. I was refering to laptops. I have worked on six presario laptops, two older ones, 4 that where newer including a PIII and an AMD powered machine, that had one stick, of 256, or 128. I also worked on a few Laptops with a mixed set, 128 and 256.

 

Depends on the category of the laptop. Mine is a business grade and came with two sticks, same as the two Gateways that I friends of mine purchased. Really depends on the class of the laptop.

 

This my last post under this thread because I hate to do this I said you said garbage. It depends on the company as well, my Dell came with a 256 and a 128. but another dell I worked on came with a single 256 came with a single 512. Now this is all well and good for charlotte but we are suposed to be helping this young man to upgrade his soon to be new laptop. Now the bottom line is it dosn't matter what we say until he pulls the ram cover off the laptop he won't know how much he should buy. This is mostlikely a presario the ram will be easy to find and easy to upgrade.

Feel free to get the last word in, I have said my peace.

Good luck to the poster.

 

@ Mission17...A simple solution would be to run a tiny utility like Belarc Advisor and it will give you pretty much everything you need to know about the hardware in the laptop including brand and serial numbers. This would IMO give you a better starting point and then you can go from there.

 

Jeff, I would make sure you are getting a proper copy of XP, and not a burnt or preinstalled one. Sooner or later you will need it.


That's a pretty good price, and depending on what you need it for, it will do most things.