I have a 4.5 year old Dell Latitude D600 which is obviously slowing down a fair bit now. It currently has only 512MB RAM so I'm hoping that upgrading to 2 x 1 GB RAM will really improve its performance. Is there much difference in the quality of different brands of memory? On the Dell website 1 GB is £31.70 (GBP) which is quite reasonable I think? Any advice would be appreciated - will this upgrade really make a difference on speed and multi tasking?
That's "retail" price. Those modules can be found for less in any number of places. I've seen them (1GB DDR333 SODIMM) in the US for as low as 35 US Dollar = 23.55887 British Pound shipped. Do your shopping, buy a reputable brand that has a lifetime warranty and you will be OK.
Computer retailers like Dell always make huge profit margins on their memory. Even when customizing machines from them take the lowest ram option and upgrade it yourself. They'll charge you more for going from 2 to 3 gigs than it costs to buy 4 gigs yourself. There are several quality brands out there like corsair, kingston, and crucial. While it is more expensive to upgrade older DDR ram than it is DDR2, it is still a very worthwhile upgrade.
Thank you for your replies, I have taken what you said on board. I thought Dell would have a large mark up, but found similar prices on eBay for laptop specific memory, which made me think their price was standard. Forgot about a big site here in the UK - ebuyer.com. Came across this: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/115724 Kingston 1GB DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 Laptop Memory SODIMM Non-ECC CL5 Is this too budget - should I be looking to spend a bit more for better quality? If I knew memory was this cheap, I would have upgraded ages ago! Thanks again for the help.
Yep you're right, as the previous member said, DDR is much more expensive - about 4x more unfortunately! Is there much to worry about with the difference of 333mhz and 400mhz? I guess I'll go for this: Crucial 1GB DDR 333MHz/PC2700 Laptop Memory SODIMM Unbuffered CL2.5 http://www.ebuyer.com/product/65739/show_product_overview Which actually makes the Dell memory much cheaper... I'm wondering now whether to just get a new laptop, as I need the hinges on the screen/lid replaced too - been quoted £150/$220. Is 5 years too long to have a laptop?!
And I need a new battery! As I need my laptop propped up against a wall (because of the broken hinges) it never leaves my desk and so is always plugged in - meaning the battery now only lasts about 10 minutes!!
I had a toshiba laptop around 5yrs old with 512mb of ram and a bad battery cause it was always plugged in. I figure it was gonna cost me almost $200 to upgrade the ram to it's max 2gb and get a 9 cell battery. So I sold my laptop for $250 and bought a new one. I figure it is better to buy a new laptop because you can get a way better one these days for about $500-600.
