[cyberspacegenie]

Hi all, I have a friend who has an Acer Travelmate 244LM laptop. Its quite old and still works well. I will be doing some upgrades on it for him next week in terms of RAM and HDD. In this laptop it is possible to change the CPU too and I am wondering if it is worth doing it for him or whether it will cause more problems than it solves. The model has a Celeron 2.6Ghz CPU (socket 478) at present. I am looking at upgrading it to a Pentium 4 2.6Ghz (socket 478) or higher. I am planning on using a Northwood chip as I have been told that the Prescot chips generate more heat. Is this feasible/worth the hassle? Are there likely to be heat issues? He is not going to get another laptop until this one dies so this is simply about making this one a little faster for him. He uses it mainly for interenet, movies, music, and a few old games. Any help on the this would be appreciated. Many thanks.

[SocialWarfare]

I wouldn't bother upgrading the CPU, maybe just upgrading the RAM would suffice

[slipend]

I have never really thought upgrading the CPU on laptops was even possible.

However, if you have access to the processor and it is a case of just slotting the new one in, go for it, as it will make it a little faster.

[Hybr!d]

How much RAM does it have, if it is equal or less than 512MB then upgrading that will be much easier and make much more of a difference.

[cyberspacegenie]

He currently only has 512mb of RAM so I'm going to put in another 512mb. I thought possibly upgrading the processor too which make it a little faster, but perhaps the performance gain will not be worth the hassle it would take to get it and put it in. I think if I could upgrade him to a faster CPU it may be worth it but then I'd be worried about the increased heat produced. i think I may just leave it at a RAM and HDD upgrade.

[ozone911]

every celeron i had never had the right socket to upgrade to a pentium.my bet is if it did jive w/ rest of chipset ,it would double in performance, when multi -tasking for sure!

[mctw]

is it really worth the hastle, 'cos i wouldnt have thought it make a HUGE amount of difference. changing a laptop processor is usually a pain to say the least, but hey, maybe there are some laptops that are a bit easier.

as other people have said, 1 or 2gb of ram will have a much larger difference on speed, especially if you use the highest speed ram that the board can take.