best system upgrade
 

i'm thinking of upgrading my toshiba tecra A2 laptop. Currently I have 512mb of ram (at 400mhz) a 1.5GHz Pentium M single core processor (2mb L2 Cache and 400mhz fsb) and a 5400rpm 60gig hdd all on a intel 855GME motherboard.

At the moment i can only really upgrade one component so i'm wondering which would be the most efficient thing to uypgrade in increase system performance?

I would just upgrade the ram except that i only ever really seem to use around half of it (in gnome), leaving around 256mb for system cache. So, am i likely to ever see an increase in performance by adding another 512mb which would just be used as system cache?

OR

Would i be better off buying a 7200rpm hdd which would reduce the load times of programs when they are not cached in the ram (ie the first time they are loaded after boot--which is rather often)?

OR

Would i be better off to upgrade the processor if i can afford it/find one to suit my (now slightly old motherboard)?

I would go for the memory. Just jumping my PIII from 512 to 768 made a big difference. You may have waited too long (check to be sure) on the cpu. Once a cpu socket/slot get so old it gets more expensive to replace than it is worth. I have a 939 board that I would love to update the cpu but it is now more cost effective to buy a AM2 board and cpu.

memory will help immensely, as long as your laptop will take it. you may only have two memory slots, and have both in use and end up needing two 512mb sticks... laptops suck for upgrades IMO. the processor would be a big problem because you may run into overheating issues that would not be as much of a factor on a desktop, possibly the same with a larger HDD. plus a laptop HDD upgrade can get expensive, plus will your mobo support it or even use it at the faster speed?

visit crucial.com and put in your laptop model, etc and it will give you what you need for a memory upgrade. you should be able to find the same ram for less elsewhere.

good luck.

Memory, memory and then memory. I happily ran Gnome on a 800 MHz machine. But running Linux on a 1700 MHz machine with 256 MB made me cry because of the sluggishness. A Pentium M processor at 1.5 G is fast enough for any Linux.

jlinkels