Dell m101z upgrades?

[JT!]

So a handful of years ago when I knew little about computers my wife bought a Dell m101z for $500. It's is and has always been terrible.

It originally had 2gb of ram, now has 4gb. But it's obvious that it's AMD Athlon II Neo k125 Regor 1.7 Ghz processor is terrible.

What's the best cpu I can put in this thing?

It's still a nice little laptop and it's a shame it can't be used.

Thanks and sorry for spamming the Plaza with my computer questions.

Additional info: Socket ASB2 (BGA 812).

[NaturalViolence]

BGA 812....oh god.

I recommend fire. Lots of it.

The best cpu you could possibly put in it is a Turion II K685 (1.8GHz dual core instead of 1.7GHz single core, same architecture). Good luck finding one for a reasonable price though. Seriously though just buy a new computer.

[Anti-Ultimate]

Doesn't BGA mean it's soldered onto the board?

[JT!]

I hope not that would suck.

I'm willing to spend a fair amount of money on it, otherwise the entire laptop goes to waste, it's juts too slow to use for anything right now.

[KHg8m3r]

Whats the operating system running on it?

[NaturalViolence]

Anti-Ultimate Wrote:Doesn't BGA mean it's soldered onto the board?

Yes. You could still swap cpus, but it would be very tricky.

JT! Wrote:I'm willing to spend a fair amount of money on it, otherwise the entire laptop goes to waste, it's juts too slow to use for anything right now.

Considering how old it is spending lots of money to keep it in service does not seem like a wise choice.

[JT!]

(02-20-2014, 09:26 AM)KHg8m3r Wrote: Whats the operating system running on it?

Win 7 Home Premium 64-bit.

(02-20-2014, 09:43 AM)NaturalViolence Wrote:

Anti-Ultimate Wrote:Doesn't BGA mean it's soldered onto the board?

Yes. You could still swap cpus, but it would be very tricky.

JT! Wrote:I'm willing to spend a fair amount of money on it, otherwise the entire laptop goes to waste, it's juts too slow to use for anything right now.

Considering how old it is spending lots of money to keep it in service does not seem like a wise choice.

Damn. And I guess a whole new board would be more expensive than buying a new laptop.

Any suggestions on how to squeeze more life out of it?

[admin89]

It's still faster than Intel Atom Z650 which power this device
That device has a SSD so that it could boot faster , run application faster . SSD + disabling Aero could help you

[KHg8m3r]

Most BGA laptop CPUs that I've seen were soldered to the board and then had glue around the edge of the CPU (not near the heatsink)

Just threw an SSD into an older laptop for a robotics project that had would put the computer under a lot of shaking and bumping (bad for a HDD), and it gave a wonderful speed boost (Windows 7 boot, applications, etc), just like admin89 says.

Other than that, there's not much else you can do to it. You can re-purpose it, though, and use it for something else besides a laptop. You can turn it into an in-house NAS (network attached storage) server to store and stream files between computers and media players.

[NaturalViolence]

JT! Wrote:Damn. And I guess a whole new board would be more expensive than buying a new laptop.

No. But I would never spend $200-300 just to keep that laptop in service. Just buy a new laptop for $500. It will be exponentially better.