Upgrading Options - Dell 640m laptop

Trotter

I have a 2 year old Dell 640m thats relatively well behaved. Old age is starting to kick in though and I'm considering upgrading the laptop. Crucial.com's scanner states that I can upgrade the existing two 512k RAM slots to two 2GB RAM slots. I've read elsewhere though that it'll only take two 1GB slots.

How can I confirm this?

Also, in order to save myself the money to buy a new laptop, (The HD is fine) would there be anything else obvious you'd do to upgrade it?

The CPU is the Intel T2300 1.66GHZ. Is it a big/expensive job to upgrade this myself? If so, how would I know what CPU I could put onto the board? It seems easily accessible by screwing off the protective lid on the base of the laptop.

Any advice welcome!

lmimmfn

upgrading the slots or the sticks? laptops have a max ram that they will support, ive not heard of upgrading that.

Normally older laptops are good if you add some ram, HD if needed and do a reinstall.

As for upgrading the cpu,hmmm, never tried it myself as i avoid buying any laptop myself( i have a work one but did cave and bought herself one last christmas ). As long as you can actually change the cpu and the socket is the same it will be fine, however you may need better cooling, both of which will affect your battery life.

Other than mem & harddrive its not recommended to upgrade anything else in a laptop due to thermal specs/battery life etc.

Trotter

I'm looking at taking out the 2 512k sticks and putting in a couple of 2gb sticks to get the most out of it when I put windows 7 on the machine.

lmimmfn

Trotter wrote: »

I'm looking at taking out the 2 512k sticks and putting in a couple of 2gb sticks to get the most out of it when I put windows 7 on the machine.

check the laptop specs, some cant use more than 2Gigs etc.

*EDIT* it says on the dell site that for the inspiron that the max mem is 2Gigs - http://www.dell.com/us/en/dfb/notebooks/inspn_640m/pd.aspx?refid=inspn_640m&s=dfb&cs=28&~section=specs#tabtop
if it can use more i dunno

Trotter

lmimmfn wrote: »

check the laptop specs, some cant use more than 2Gigs etc.

*EDIT* it says on the dell site that for the inspiron that the max mem is 2Gigs - http://www.dell.com/us/en/dfb/notebooks/inspn_640m/pd.aspx?refid=inspn_640m&s=dfb&cs=28&~section=specs#tabtop
if it can use more i dunno

hmm.. 2x 1GB Sticks will have to do so.

mcbert

I have this laptop, and I can confirm 4GB (2x 2GB) works fine.

Its nearly two years ago now, but I bought the following 4GB kit from crucial:

"CT535900 4GB kit (2GBx2), 200-pin SODIMM Upgrade for a Dell Inspiron 640m System"

This isn't the first spec from Dell thats said 2GB limit, but actually takes 4GB...

Trotter

Thanks for that info!