Laptop died ! Need a new one but what ?

[citronut]

im useing my son's 7 year old Tosh equium A60, he said was dieing/on its last legs as it kept over heating and shutting down, till after him saying i realy need to spend about £2oo quid to build a newer machine out of my onle tower,


i dismantled the Tosh to find the CPU heat sink finns completly clogged up, cleaned then out not she runs very fast and very cool for her age,

what did you old laptop die of HDI and do you still have it, if so would you sell and how much including carridge to East Sussex,

regards malcolm

[myglaren]

This being the most current thread for "Help!" type laptop issues, here's a poser from my old man.

He wishes to upgrade the memory in his ancient Toshiba - apparently fine otherwise. Spec calls for PC-2100 / 266MHz notebook DDR RAM cards. While he can buy 2 cards of 512MB each, I looked and the 1GB units of PC-2700 spec RAM are generally cheaper.

I understand that 333MHz PC-2700 cards almost always work as a pair in these applications, but will they be compromised in terms of how usable their nominally doubled memory is?

Thanks, Adam.

My Tosh came with 2x1 Gb cards. I bought a 2 Gb from Crucial and when fitted the machine wouldn't boot. Swapped the card positions and it has worked fine since (five years). No explanation for that but did experimentally swap them around and any combination will work but the 2 Gb card MUST be in slot 1 if present.

One thing that I found though was that reinstalling Windows made a much more dramatic improvement than the memory increase.
As does running Ubuntu on it

[xantia_v6]

He wishes to upgrade the memory in his ancient Toshiba - apparently fine otherwise. Spec calls for PC-2100 / 266MHz notebook DDR RAM cards. While he can buy 2 cards of 512MB each, I looked and the 1GB units of PC-2700 spec RAM are generally cheaper.

I understand that 333MHz PC-2700 cards almost always work as a pair in these applications, but will they be compromised in terms of how usable their nominally doubled memory is?

Thanks, Adam.

Which model of Toshiba?
My experience is that most notebook PCs (not desktop) run happily with "unbalanced" memory, but it depends on the chipset.

BTW, to those earlier in the thread who rate Toshiba's, 20 years ago they were the only mackine to have, but in the last 10 years I had several work machines, and at least 4 of them had hardware failures within a couple of years.

I still have one, it has had the hinges replaced, the power control PCB replaced, the keyboard replaced, it still runs my Lexia clone, but some of the keyboard keys are intermittent again.

Dell hardware is generally OK, but the software drivers and support tend to let them down

For best package of HW and (Windows) software I would have to vote for Lenovo. I have killed a couple through liquid spillage onto the keyboard, but otherwise they have been rock solid.

[addo]

It's a Satellite A10; one of the early generation where you start the HDD by inserting a shotgun blank into the starting cylinder and rapping on its firing pin with a hammer.

[Dommo]

Just out of interest, do you use the laptop on a soft surface? Normally problems with graphics is due to heat build up often caused by people using laptops on soft surfaces so the vents get blocked and the laptop can't cool itself down, akin to putting a bag over your car's radiator then expecting it not to overheat!

[citronut]

i use mine on a twin fan base,

also it has had mother board replaced twice under warenty, but was then being hammerd/extensively used by my son in its early years,

it has also had a set of hindge's,


regards malcolm

[HDI]

what did you old laptop die of HDI and do you still have it, if so would you sell and how much including carridge to East Sussex,

regards malcolm

More or less certain the graphics chip has cooked so it would need a motherboard. That writes it off really.
I need to pull the hard drive so I can recover the data, the rest of it I was going to sell in parts on ebay. Processor, optical drive, memory etc.

[ashy90]

He wishes to upgrade the memory in his ancient Toshiba - apparently fine otherwise. Spec calls for PC-2100 / 266MHz notebook DDR RAM cards. While he can buy 2 cards of 512MB each, I looked and the 1GB units of PC-2700 spec RAM are generally cheaper.

I understand that 333MHz PC-2700 cards almost always work as a pair in these applications, but will they be compromised in terms of how usable their nominally doubled memory is?

Thanks, Adam.

Which model of Toshiba?
My experience is that most notebook PCs (not desktop) run happily with "unbalanced" memory, but it depends on the chipset.

BTW, to those earlier in the thread who rate Toshiba's, 20 years ago they were the only mackine to have, but in the last 10 years I had several work machines, and at least 4 of them had hardware failures within a couple of years.

I still have one, it has had the hinges replaced, the power control PCB replaced, the keyboard replaced, it still runs my Lexia clone, but some of the keyboard keys are intermittent again.

Dell hardware is generally OK, but the software drivers and support tend to let them down

For best package of HW and (Windows) software I would have to vote for Lenovo. I have killed a couple through liquid spillage onto the keyboard, but otherwise they have been rock solid.

I personally agree with everything you have said.

This talk of computers has bought back some memories.

My dad used to run his own little computer 'business' so to speak - from home, done it part time as he had another job. Started off buying and selling computers and laptops, then went into computer repairs. I used to help him out, I was probably only about 12 when I built my first computer (thats what I did instead of seeing friends lol). I remember going with him to collect dozens of computers (old companys, computer auctions etc.) it was great fun. Anyway, the IBM's where always the best I think, and Compaq - before HP owned them. Suprising Dell were usually very good too - I think they have certainly gone down hill in some ways. Never liked the Toshiba stuff of late 1990's/early 2000's.

Anyway talking of more modern laptop computers......havnt liked the last couple of 'series; of Toshiba lapops - felt very poor quality, as you say the hinges were weak, the two clicky buttons for the mouse/touchpad annoy me (never manage to press the correct one for some reason), also they were quite expensive for what they were. The latest series of Toshiba laptops I quite like though.

[KP]

We mostly use Lenovo at work, we used to use Dell for all kit but now only stick to them for our high end engineering laptops but they still mess us about a bit.

The thinkpads just carry on going even when battered but when a user used to complain of performance they'd get a memory upgrade from 1 to 2 gig and then if they still whined i'd wipe the machine and start from fresh ensuring that things like virtual memory and so fourth and the users never complained after that

I'd never mix memory speeds, but you could possibly use faster memory than that spec'd as it will just run at the lower speed. the voltage is the most prevelant spec...

[addo]

I'd never mix memory speeds, but you could possibly use faster memory than that spec'd as it will just run at the lower speed. the voltage is the most prevelant spec...

Good to have "official" FCF tech input; I also ended up noticing many Fleabay vendors of RAM stated the faster memories were backwards compatible.

[KP]

I'd never mix memory speeds, but you could possibly use faster memory than that spec'd as it will just run at the lower speed. the voltage is the most prevelant spec...

Good to have "official" FCF tech input; I also ended up noticing many Fleabay vendors of RAM stated the faster memories were backwards compatible.

They usually are but dont stray too far from the beaten path. I've had success in some machines of DDR333 working in DDR266 machines and sometimes not.

Think of the sticks as tyres, would you stick a different tyre make and size on each corner??

I wouldn't, stick to a good brand, like Hynix, ADATA or Samsung. you can find kingston out there still and they are decent, crucial as well but they tend to cost more. also DRAM prices are falling more and more everyday amid current world issues, so holding out a bit longer and maybe getting a newer machine(as HDD's are coming down in price as well) could be a better option for the price of 2 sticks of memory you can sometimes buy a half decent machine from a decent source

[addo]

He was going to buy two 512MB Kingstons (266MHz), which would've been $80 or so here. By comparison I can get him 1GB of Hynix off Fleabay for $35, or generic for $10 less.

Quite a bit cheaper than a replacement machine. Also, the more I save him now, the more I inherit - right?