1. Introduction

This article covers a wide range of upgrade options available for notebook computers.

Nothing is truly obsolete so long as it serves a useful purpose for someone, somewhere. We donate our retired eyeglasses to charity when they're no longer adequate to correct our own vision, so that others who cannot afford custom-ground eyeglasses may benefit. Especially during this time of year in the northern hemisphere, we donate our coats and warm clothes so the less fortunate can cope with the cold. In the grand scheme of things, notebook computers are not much different.

Upgrading a notebook computer can extend its lifespan, improve your end-user experience and reward you with the knowledge that sometimes you really can teach your old dog a new trick or two - though, in most cases, that's entirely up to the dog. In fact, upgrades are probably better-suited when it comes to a notebook you already own, or a second-hand notebook deal you may be pondering, rather than that keeper you may be eyeing on a retail shelf.

Then, too, certain minor upgrades can make a major impact on the perceived and actual performance of your notebook - such as doubling-up on memory, drive speed or disk space - whereas others are more cosmetic in nature, and don't really improve your user experience all that much - such as replacing your LCD screen. Apart from being costly, notebook upgrades can also sometimes be technically prohibitive in some key cases, which our article aims to address.

A few key upgrades are relatively simple and provide an excellent return on the investment required, with immediate benefits. The best examples are probably memory and hard drive upgrades: by introducing more headroom for software resources, hardware resources can benefit from perceptible performance gains. One of our authors was able to squeak an extra 18 months of productive life out of an old Dell Latitude 3800. He did this simply by increasing the memory from 256 to 512 MB, thereby enabling an OS upgrade from Windows 2000 to Windows XP Professional. He was able to install newer office components accordingly, and thus breathed life into an old machine.

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