GoodNews101
In Runtime
- Messages
- 331
- Location
- Southern New Jersey
So I am over at my sister's place Friday night and she asked me if I would like a laptop. I said sure, let me take a look. It is an old Toshiba Tecra S1 (from about 2003) that she got from work a year and a half ago and it is actually in decent shape (for a company work laptop that has been passed on to several employees) and solidly built. I fiddled around with it for 2 days and suprisingly it is very stable.
It has the latest and last BIOS offered (from 2005) and I was able to upgrade the Intel wireless driver that was dated from 2006. All USB ports are working (unfortunately no S-Video or Firewire). It has Windows XP Pro and I was able to install SP2 without a hitch. The cpu is a 1.4 GHz Pentium M. It also has a DVD/CD-RW drive.
The only thing that I see as a drawback (besides old tech) is that the harddrive is a mere 40 GBs. I know very little about laptop hardware except the basics so can anyone suggest what harddrive I should consider concerning laptop especially in older offerings? An 80 to 120 Gig offering would be fine for my needs.
I have researched and I do know it is an IDE drive ATA-5. Will an ATA-6 drive work in this machine and the BIOS?
Also, there is only 512 megs of PC2100 RAM in a 2x256 configuration. I can upgrade to two gigs of PC2700. Will the BIOS give me an issue?
Lastly, I would love to be able to purchase a new laptop but finances are a no go and this offering will do what I need. Do you think the upgrades are worth it? Like I said, I am a novice when it comes to laptops.
Thanks.
It has the latest and last BIOS offered (from 2005) and I was able to upgrade the Intel wireless driver that was dated from 2006. All USB ports are working (unfortunately no S-Video or Firewire). It has Windows XP Pro and I was able to install SP2 without a hitch. The cpu is a 1.4 GHz Pentium M. It also has a DVD/CD-RW drive.
The only thing that I see as a drawback (besides old tech) is that the harddrive is a mere 40 GBs. I know very little about laptop hardware except the basics so can anyone suggest what harddrive I should consider concerning laptop especially in older offerings? An 80 to 120 Gig offering would be fine for my needs.
I have researched and I do know it is an IDE drive ATA-5. Will an ATA-6 drive work in this machine and the BIOS?
Also, there is only 512 megs of PC2100 RAM in a 2x256 configuration. I can upgrade to two gigs of PC2700. Will the BIOS give me an issue?
Lastly, I would love to be able to purchase a new laptop but finances are a no go and this offering will do what I need. Do you think the upgrades are worth it? Like I said, I am a novice when it comes to laptops.
Thanks.