Have a Dell Latitude D520. Running Bios A08 modded with Dell SLIC 2.1.. It's as it came other than I upgraded one stick of ram to 2gb from Sterling Memory so it has 2.5gb of ram and has Win 7 Pro rather than XP.. I'm thinking either an upgrade to a 2.33ghz T7600 processor from the 1.6 GHZ T5500. OR getting an SSD.. The SSD I am eyeballing is a Kingston SATA II 64gb model which I can get for $50, or the T7600 is around $60-70.. Which upgrade should I go for?.. I think I might get another 2gb stick of memory along with the processor if I go that route being I would be under the keyboard anyway. I'd have to upgrade to 64 bit to take advantage of 4gb of ram tho
Dell lists a 128gb SSD they sell as compatible with the D520, but $200 is a little steep for a $100 laptop.. I think other SSD's should work also. I found Corsair F-80's refurb'd for $53 As far as upgrading in 1-2 years. This computer was actually my recent laptop upgrade. My laptop only gets used for my OBD II scanner software and when I'm not near my desktop for a weekend or more, so having the latest and greatest is really unnecessary if I can get something decent for a lot less... I upgraded from an Acer Aspire 3100 with 512mb Ram, Sempron 2800 and originally Vista Starter. I used it until the keyboard bezel broke too much for my liking ( hinges attached to bezel.. brilliant ). The D520 cost me $75, and the Acer cost me $599 in 2007ish and it never did work right. Acer supports answer was basically 'tough'.. Once I determined that I really had no warranty, I bought a cheap copy of XP not knowing about Bios mods or the SLP's then.. Will the 800mhz FSB T7700 work? I thought I had to stick with 667 MHZ chips.. I noticed the same price difference. 800mhz chips are way cheaper
not sure.. ive seen D620 upgrade be similar so check for D620 to see if it does. yah SSD mostly do work. some need firmware update. BIOS must be set AHCI and XP needs AHCI drivers for intel chipset sata driver for XP .. F6 setup driver.
Well, it runs Win 7 Pro now.. After running it for a while I'm thinking it's adaquate the way it is. I'm eyeballing a good Intel SSD on Ebay right now, and if it's cheap enough near the end of the auction, I may try to snag it.. If not, I may just upgrade my desktop instead because I have the itch to do that and it could be faster.