[quintessenceanx]

I am thinking about replacing my laptop sometime in the near future. Since the internals all work very well, I was thinking it would be a good idea to try and hybridize the new one from this one as much as possible. I currently own an Inspiron 5150. Although for the past two years I have been able to manage the heating problem fairly well, this past semester my idle battery life dropped from 4 hrs (what it was initially) to 2 hrs. I am not sure if it is the heating problem, however the the cooling pad I have for it does not seem to help it much. (I did crack it open with the help of a friend to see if there was any dust/lint/etc. in the fan, blocking it from functioning properly- there wasn't.)

Currently it has a Pent. 4 in it running at 3 GHz, and a 40 GB hard drive with 512 MB of RAM. Is there any way that I can use some of the parts for the new computer?

If not, I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions for parts for a student, who would appreciate cheap/durable parts? I heard that good places to buy parts are newegg.com and zipzoomfly.com, but how do I gauge how expensive/high end I need to go?

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Are you talking about building another laptop? It is so hard to work on laptops because it is almost impossible to move hardware from one laptop to another. Memory and hard drives are about the only things you can move. Newegg does not have much in hardware for laptops although they have the best prices on what hardware they have. Laptops are also about twice the price of desktop computers.

If you are going to build a desktop computer you need to decide what you are going to do with it. A gaming computer will be built quite differently than a plain home computer. Gamers tend to go for the fastest processors, overclockable motherboards, lots of memory and high end video cards. A normal home use computer can do without all the expensive hardware. You can build a good home use puter for around $500 while a game puter will run in the $100-1500 range.

If i was building a home use computer hers what i would have.

Intel, gygabyte, or DFI PCI-E motherboard- $80T
I am fond of the intel processors so a good 3.0 processor would be fine. -$200
1 gig of memory - $100
might as well get a 250 gig or better SATA HD -$90
NEC 3550 DVD-RW and maybe even a lite-on CD-RW/DVD combo drive - $40 $ $30
Nvidia 6200 or better video card - $65
Creative audigy sound card - $35
Any case that i like - $70

Well this is $710 but you can cut some corners and get the price down. It would be good for a couple of years and by then you will want to upgrade anyway.

SRX660

[SRX660]

Are you talking about building another laptop? It is so hard to work on laptops because it is almost impossible to move hardware from one laptop to another. Memory and hard drives are about the only things you can move. Newegg does not have much in hardware for laptops although they have the best prices on what hardware they have. Laptops are also about twice the price of desktop computers.

If you are going to build a desktop computer you need to decide what you are going to do with it. A gaming computer will be built quite differently than a plain home computer. Gamers tend to go for the fastest processors, overclockable motherboards, lots of memory and high end video cards. A normal home use computer can do without all the expensive hardware. You can build a good home use puter for around $500 while a game puter will run in the $100-1500 range.

If i was building a home use computer hers what i would have.

Intel, gygabyte, or DFI PCI-E motherboard- $80T
I am fond of the intel processors so a good 3.0 processor would be fine. -$200
1 gig of memory - $100
might as well get a 250 gig or better SATA HD -$90
NEC 3550 DVD-RW and maybe even a lite-on CD-RW/DVD combo drive - $40 $ $30
Nvidia 6200 or better video card - $65
Creative audigy sound card - $35
Any case that i like - $70

Well this is $710 but you can cut some corners and get the price down. It would be good for a couple of years and by then you will want to upgrade anyway.

SRX660

[warriorscot]

Thats a pretty expensive home computer there, Laptops are really not buildable in a normal environment not reccomended at all getting parts also a big bother. To fix the battery problem you can get a new battery, you might try reconditioning it you might get another 30mins to an hour back but batteries have a certain limit to how long they work.

So it comes down to how rich a student you are.

[quintessenceanx]

Thank you for all the info! I do not need anything quite as speedy as a gamer computer, but I do need something a bit better than "average" because of the software that I will be using for the math/science. I want another laptop, because I like the fact that it is small and I can carry it around. Except if I could build my own I would want to have something external for CD/DVD RW and etc., leaving more room to cool the insides (and thus hopefully avert the heating problem). If I can't do that, then I will start looking at the desktop idea. It seems that desktops are cheaper because they don't have to squish all the parts in such a small space, but if I could have the CD/DVD, maybe a larger external hard drive, and any other non-essentials put in that, and then use the drive in the laptop as the primary drive, in addition to using the laptop screen as a monitor, that would be awesome. A real franken-puter

How do I know what the different numbers translate to? For instance I know that 3 GHz is faster than 1 GHz, and that 1 Gig of RAM is better than 512 Megs (the more, the better!), but for other parts such as the motherboard, or video card, how do I know what the numbers translate to? I was looking around and some seemed to have the same speed, but some other small differences that led to huge price gaps between the two. How do I know how to interpret the specs and tell what I need vs. overkill?

Sorry if a bit redundant, and thank you for your help

[Casheti]

Try not to recharge the battery too much either. Every time you charge a battery, it loses some power cells, so avoid charging when you can.

[warriorscot]

You have to recharge the Battery, obviously thats just daft, by that logic you should just go in a coma now as every time you use your bain you losr brain cells. lol.

Well bigger isnt always better for laptops they increase the cache size to give better performance at lower clock speeds so a 2Ghz CPU would be better than a 3Ghz of an older normal model.

From my experience most science and maths software isnt to demanding computer wise easily runs on the crappy dells and HPs at most education establishments, a desktop you can put together for $500 a laptop can run as much as a $1000 for something half decent, you can pick up dell laptops that are ok but not neccesarily fast for less though.

If i were you i would probably just upgrade my laptop, get a gig of ram for it, a new HDD and a new battery as the CPU is pretty powerful and if you dnot need a gfx card then a laptop is fine for your needs.

[Casheti]

Finally, a word this forum site doesn't filter. CRAPPY

[JourneyMan]

You trying to run maple and solidworks?

Both of those like lots of RAM. A gig should do it.

Make sure when you're working with the programs that the laptop is plugged in. I know Centrinos will underclock (go slower) when running on battery, and maybe the P4s do to (possible, since the mainboard set the clock)

A new hardisk won't get you anything, but keep mind that just about any desktop HD will be faster than than a laptop HD.

[quintessenceanx]

Thanks for all the wonderful advice!

Usually I leave my laptop plugged in, so the battery longevity isn't the issue so much as I'm concerned about the overheating. I recall that the 5150's went out of production (after I bought it of course) because the heating problem became so intense. One of the guys I worked with had a warped motherboard because of this. I am just worried that the sudden drop in battery life, coupled with the decreased effectiveness of the cooling pad/fans, is a sign that something is amiss.

I definitely want to upgrade to a gig of RAM... and I don't know about the clock speed. Even if faster isn't better, should I be attempting to stick parts in there that are slower?