Upgrade laptop or buy a new one?

[dazza555]

Hi all
I have a Toshiba satellite A70 notebook with a Mobile Intel Pentium 4 CPU 3.2GHz and 256mb of RAM. I use my computer alot for school work but recently I have started using programs like TMPGEnc DVD source creator and DVD-lab to do alot of video editing with 4gb+ file sizes and I have found that my computer is struggling to cope. In recent times also my processor has killed the computer to prevent heat damage.

I want to know if simply upgrading to 1gb of RAM will be enough. If not would upgrading my processor help, if so what is the best one I can upgrade to with this notebook. Or would it be best to simply buy a new notebook, the local computer shop showed me an acer aspire 9425WSMi which has an Intel core 2 Duo t7200 CPU and 2gb of RAM.
Thanks for any advive.

 

[borat_sagdiyev]

yea i dont recommend rendering on a laptop

but i think you should get a new one

 

[Taylor1]

get a mac, they are awesome for video editing and other editing stuff

 

[SheikZ]

Having a Toshiba myself, I would recommend getting the RAM rather than spending for a whole new computer. Your processor is amazing compared to mine (1.6GHz) but your RAM is the more important for things while actually working on the computer (i.e. the processor is best for booting speed and things that would be outside of windows).

Also..... How much did you pay for that one???

 

[Tommy Boy]

Yeah, I'd try getting the ram first. 256mb is very little.

 

[dazza555]

Having a Toshiba myself, I would recommend getting the RAM rather than spending for a whole new computer. Your processor is amazing compared to mine (1.6GHz) but your RAM is the more important for things while actually working on the computer (i.e. the processor is best for booting speed and things that would be outside of windows).

Also..... How much did you pay for that one???

It cost me AU$2000 with a printer and camera.

I love this laptop so I'll try the RAM first. What about relacing the hard drive too. I feel it's getting old and I know there must be faster ones out there. What would be the best one to get? Thanks for the speedy replies.

 

[borat_sagdiyev]

that laptop is certainly not worth 2000

 

[SheikZ]

Please read before you post.

 

[bullzi]

yea guys seriously read the older posts, uh if it were me and you just want to do a quick upgrade i would just add a stick of ram, i think that would be the quickest and easy way to do it, your processor looks like it could cope quite easily but the ram definatley needs to be upgraded! and as far as harddrives go, your laptop i would guess since its older probably has a 4200 rpm hd, which isnt good for video editing, you can get a lot of lag when loading, viewing etc. i think the fastest laptop harddrive out right now is a 7200 which is the same as a standard desktop, they also have a 5400 rpm harddrive which i have in my dell inspiron (specs in sig) and i get actually pretty good load times for a laptop, you would notice huge differences in load time if you were to upgrade to a faster harddrive, there may be faster harddrives but as far as price im not sure how much they are, harddrives definately aren't too hard to find, and are an easy upgradebut if you need help just let us know

 

[compguy91]

I would upgrade to at least 1GB for video editing. Then it should be tolerable for editing videos and stuff like that. I would look into something with dual core if you can afford it, I'd also look into a macbook or macbook pro because they have dual core and mac OS X is excellent for multimedia stuff. Depends whether you think upgrading RAM or buying a whole new machine is more important....