hello everyone. I have a dell inspration that i want to upgrade the ram and cpu. It came with a pentium M 1.4 cpu and 2 sticks of 256 = 512 ram. I am thinking of getting 2gigs of ram and i dont know what motherboard i have or what type of socket. Can someone let me know what socket I have and what combonation of ram/cpu would make this thing fly?

thanks,

pbox

First up, moved thread and appropriately renamed... it is Inspiron not Inspiration...

The i8600 uses the Intel 855 chipset which can accommodate an Intel Pentium M 765 (2.1GHz) if you are really keen... that is rather expensive though and one step down to the 755 @ 2.0GHz is more cost effective. The RAM you are after is 200-pin DDR SODIMM running at 333MHz. Note: newer DDR2 RAM will not work.

OK, that all being said... upgrading to max specs on this laptop will cost you a fair bit of dosh and still leave you well behind the 8-ball technology wise as it is several generations outdated. I'd suggest it would be worth saving your money for a while until you can afford a new laptop completely.

Stu

Well I have this same laptop which also had a 1.4 Pentium-M. I just dropped in a Pentium-M 2.0 last month and I dropped in a stick of DDR333 1GB late last year. I am running 1.2GB of RAM now and this week I am putting in the additional 1GB to max out the RAM to 2GB and I am buying a 100GB 7200rpm harddrive as the one I have is a whooping 4200rpm model. Should be a significant difference. I picked up the Pentium-M 2.0 Dothan for $186. People will tell you it may not be worth upgrading but if you don't have a ton of cash for new I think its fine to pay a fair amount for an upgrade and get a few more years out of it. I use mine for photoshop so I don't need to keep up with gaming demands.

Yeah, but for all of those upgrades you are looking at spending at least US$400-500... to me that is a lot of money to spend and still be rather outdated. But I suppose each to his/ her own.

Stu

I will agree with you that it is a substantial amount of money. But I see it differently. If I only have $500 to spend right now and know that I could only save another $500 till next year, chances are that I still won't be able to get that bangin' laptop that makes most desktops jealous. I upgraded my laptop and still have the harddrive and memory to upgrade and I am sure I won't be buying a new one for a good 3-4 years.

I26, I sent you a PM but don't know if this bb alerts you that you have a message waiting. Anyhow, where did you get your Pentium-M 2.0Ghz CPU? I'd like to do the same upgrade to my Inspiron 8600 but am having a devil of a time finding the chip for under $450.

You may find a 2GHz but rarely a 2.1GHz and if you do it will cost way to much. I bid on one and it ended up going for $280. I bought a 2GHz using buy it now feature and it cost me $186. It was well worth it. I can look for you later at the ebay stores I purchased from. I'll be in touch within a few hours.

If anyone is interested in a REALLY good price on a harder and harder to find 400mHz FSB Dothan 2.0 ghz chip SL7EM, here ya go:

http://cgi.ebay.com/Intel-Mobile-Pen...QQcmdZViewItem

IMHO, this is a great upgrade for us i8600 guys. I went from a 1.4 Ghz Banias Pentium M when I got the laptop to this chip, and it runs Vista 32 just fine. My comparison desktop is a Q6600 o/c 3.6 w/ TEC cooling and 8 gb RAM running Vista64.