Are you on a tight budget but would still want to get an upgrade on your laptop computer? Well, I’m sharing 2 ways here on how to upgrade your laptop computer for less than $150.
Any ideas on how to upgrade your laptop on a tight budget? Please share.
Upgrade The Memory/RAM
Most laptops have 2 RAM slots, and your laptop is most likely has only one of the two slots occupied. That means you can just buy a second RAM and install it in the other slot. Even if both of your slots are occupied, you can still upgrade by replacing both of them with larger RAMs.
Windows XP and 32-bit versions of Vista and Windows 7 can handle 3.5GB of memory at the most. There are also 64-bit versions of Vista and Windows 7 which could handle even more memory. However, you will have to put in the right type of RAM and that’s where you are going to need help. Website like Crucial.com can help to determine the type of RAM that your laptop takes.
[Read also: RRAM! RRAM!!]
You can buy laptop RAMs at online or local stores. A 4GB RAM would cost under $30 while an 8GB RAM under $50.
Upgrade The Hard Drive
This could be a lot more difficult than you might expect, because all of the files, operating system and software are in the hard drive. You will want to transfer all of them to the new one. First, you need to figure out if your laptop takes an IDE hard drive or if it has a SATA interface.
IDE has 40 individual pins to connect to the laptop whereas SATA has two tabs instead of a bunch of pins. An external hard drive and a program called Clonezilla might be helpful here. Make a Clonezilla Live CD and boot your laptop from it. Using Clonezilla, take an image of your hard drive and store it in the external hard drive. Now swop the old hard drive with the new one.
Finally, back to Clonezilla and restore the image back to the new hard drive. According to your needs, you can buy hard drive of any space size.
You can buy hard drives at Amazon.com and choose from various companies such as Seagate and Western Digital. A 500GB hard drive would cost less than $100.
[Read also: 5 Uses for Hard Drives Old and New (That you may not have thought of)]
This is how you can upgrade your laptop with a tight budget.
[Read more: Hardware Upgrades to Boost Computer Speed While on A Limited Budget]
What’s your way to upgrade your laptop for less than $150? Let us know in the comments.
With this, many will be able to save enough money if they are planning to upgrade their laptop without spending too much money at all. This will really be very helpful and useful to people who are using laptops because they will be able to enjoy and utilize their laptop even if there are so many laptops that are sold in various markets.
These are just 2 of the many ways to upgrade laptop for cheap, glad that you found it useful to you Liane. Thanks for the comment.
It really did help me a lot Peter. I will be needing this badly most especially that i used to work on my laptop all the time. And with this, you have provided me with a great tip where I can save money at the same time..
Thanks for the compliment Liane. By the way, this blog is now on WordPress, sorry for the missing links in your comments. Some got lost during the transition and some didn’t. Anyway, comments are now KeyWordLuv and CommentLuv enabled. You can try to comment now using the format – YourName@YourKeywords.
Nice tips. Upgrading gadgets really helps sometimes and save you lots of money which you would have spent on buying a new one.
And it is also fun, thanks for the comment.
Personally when it comes to upgrading my laptop, i’d rather go to a specialist than doing it myself. Laptops are delicate and more complex compared to desktops. On the bright side though, learning how to open and upgrade your laptop on your own is cost effective however you need to seek assistance from experts especially if you’re doing it the first time.
Yes I do agree with you. If one is not confident enough to perform the upgrade on their own, it is better to let the expert to do the job. However, from my personal experience, the upgrades mentioned in the article are actually not that complicated at all. Thanks for your opinion Veronica.
sure RAM is the cheapest upgrade with noticeable performance. HDD will be next.
Thanks for your comment Kevin.
very informative post! most people only take the time to fix their desktops… its good to know that upgradinging your laptop isnt as hard as one might think! you should write a new article titled “how to upgrade your android tablet” 😉
That sounds like a pretty good idea Jarod 🙂 Thanks for the comment.
Peter, I’m sure you’ve noticed the huge surge of tablet related traffic to your site within the last 6 months, the markets are booming for this!
Yeah and particularly this month Jarod. I supposed the same goes to yours as well?
Great post, very informative and useful way to upgrade laptops without spending much. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks Rosel, glad you find it useful.
Thanks for this technical thing about laptops, I use laptops but I was not aware of this technique to upgrade.
These are just some simple and low cost ways to upgrade a laptop. Hope this article helps. Thanks for dropping by Lisa.