Don’t discard your old notebook!
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Author | Orhan Toker |
| Profession | Architect M.Sc. | |
| Autodesk Authorized Consultant | ||
| Database Specialist | ||
I am writing this article with my Toshiba Notebook that I have bought in 2003. It has a Intel Pentium 4 processor with Hyper-Threading technology. I never forget, I have paid $3,300 for it at that time. This notebook runs Autocad 2008 very well. I suppose that you are all asking; ‘How?’.
It is the topic of this article. Please do not put unnecessary instalments to your credit card if you have a notebook designed for Microsoft Windows™ XP (The best operating system for now). I know you all try hard to buy a notebook designed for Vista which is the worst operating system ever after the Windows ME. Their prices are so low.
Yet their prices starts form $1,100 and being designed for Vista; it takes two to three minutes for the notebook with this price range to turn on. I think it is not a good choice to show off with your wireless notebook in shopping malls.
After this arrogant introduction, let me prove my opinion by explaining how your old notebook is valuable. Look at the chart below comparing the features of my old Toshiba notebook with a brand new one and let us see what can we do about it.
Fig.1 What are the differences between my old Toshiba Notebook and a brand new one?
The situation is not as bad as it seems in the table shows your old notebook miserable. Firstly, it is an advantage that these old notebooks with Pentium 4 or Centrino Processors were especially designed for Windows XP. Below in this article, there is information about the things we can do about our old notebook in low costs compared to the cost of a new one. Let us upgrade our old notebook and make it even better than the new ones.
Processor: It is just fine if you have a notebook with a Intel Pentium™ 4 or Intel Centrino™ processor. Notebooks with Pentium 3 processors works also fine, but they are a bit slower than a Pentium 4 or Centrino Processor. So, there is no need to do anything about the processor.
RAM: It is the most important component of a computer for getting performance. We will observe a significant increase in the performance of a notebook if it is upgraded by new RAM’s. It is usually two memory slots in a notebook. In our old notebook it is possible that either a single 256mb RAM installed and the other slot is empty or two 128 mb Ram’s installed and there are no empty slots. You have to learn the type of the RAM’s before upgrading in both cases.
I suggest you the Cpu-Z Software. After downloading and running the programme, it can be seen in the SPD menu which kind of RAM’s are installed in which slot. The important point here is the ram type, DDR or DDRII? Buying a single 1GB RAM and installing it in the empty slot is sufficient according to me. I use 1256MB of RAM with the old one which is 256mb.
Non-Removable Disk(HDD): The HDD is probably the weakest point of your old notebook. It may be very slow since Windows is continiously writing recovery files to the disk because of low memory resulting a significant decrease in the performance. Your old HDD may be 20GB with 4200rpm anyhow. A brand new HDD will fresh up your old notebook. It is perfect to buy a brand new 120gb with 5200rpm HDD. Do not forget, your old notebook has parallel ATA interface. Do not buy a new HDD with serial ATA interface.
Optical Drive: Actually most of the old notebooks have a DVD-RW on it but if don’t, there is DVD-RW drives for notebooks in the market now. Buying a new one with 16x write speed will speed up your notebook.
Wireless Network: There are good external wireless equipments that can be installed via USB or PCMCA slot for notebooks without wireless network. I’m using a NETGEAR WG511T 108Mbit wireless card. It is more powerful and cheaper than USB type of equipment.
Battery: I am pretty sure that it has been a while since your battery has broken down. That is because any Li-Ion type of battery can only be charged 300 times or has a life time of three years. My battery works just fine since I remove the battery when the notebook is plugged. You don’t have to buy the original battery for your notebook. There are some electrical shops that sell equivalent batteries or there are some battery shops that replace the circuit in your battery.
Now, it is time to see the costs.
Fig.3 Costs
As it can be seen in the figure, the performance of our old notebook can be much higher with a cost of $300.
How much did I say about the cost of a new one?
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November 20th, 2007 10:29
Well, I´m the first one to reuse my old laptops/desktops, but at the same time, my Windows Vista startup time in the laptop I bought a year ago is nowhere near thet hree minutes mark you suggest - in fact, it starts far faster than when it had XP installed, at around 20–30 seconds the desktop is loaded, and in another 20 seconds max the HD stops reading (you can begin to work before that, though) AutoCAD 2008 also runs a lot faster in a Core 2 Duo than in a P4, and even faster since I installed Vista, so don´t be so fast at dumping the new SO.
November 20th, 2007 10:51
Thank for information Pepe,
First i have to congratulate you as the first man who have Vista and not complain startup time
i have ever met…
Of course Core 2 Duo is a faster CPU than older models. But i’m satisfied with my P4 HT CPU. It runs Xp and AutoCAD 2008 as well as Core 2 Duo. As i explain in my article P4 and Centrino CPU’s especially designed for XP.
November 21st, 2007 17:42
I suppose I´m a lucky guy ; )
I think I´m a bit tired of hearing so harsh critics of Vista, so I had to comment my experience. On the other hand, Vista is awfully slowy copying files, I concede that.
And I would jump to linux the same day AutoCAD and some structural programs worked fine on it, so don´t think I´m some kind of MS fanboy.
Greets and keep up the good work!
December 3rd, 2007 10:07
[...] our brand new notebooks, which we have bought by lots of instalments, to check e-mails in shopping malls with [...]