newbie seeking advice

[SteveSpillage]

Hi all, total newbie here so please be patient. The last time I played around with computers was with a Spectrum 48.
I have a cheap (£50) 2nd hand Asus 904HD with 1Gb memory and an 80 Gb HDD running Linux Lite 2.0. After a bit of poking  around on the web it looks like I could get a 2 Gb memory and up to 500 Gb HDD for about as much again.
My questions to you guys are;
Is it worth it?
How can I upgrade graphics and sound cards? (and is it worth it?)
and finally what do you need to know to answer those questions and how do I find the information you may need?
I am  aware the short answer may be "no".
Thanks in advance.

[austin.payne]

It depends on what you doing. If you just need a web browser the you should be fine. If you want to store videos, games, Large Photos, Long audio files, etc then you will need a larger hdd. If you plan on doing any multitasking, gaming, video wathing, etc then you will need more ram. As for graphics, I don't know of any laptops where the graphics cards aren't Sottered to the motherboard. So that really isn't an option. As for the sound cards I would say it isn't worth it.

[torreydale]

SteveSpillage,

I just looked up the specs for that machine.  Generally, I would say memory upgrades are worth it and disk drive upgrades depend on your storage needs.  For me, Linux Lite 2.4 with many programs installed takes up less than 10GB of space.  I give the partition it's on at least twice that space.  The rest of my hard drive is for the swap partition and my home partition. 

But for this machine in particular, I would say to look at its current performance with Linux Lite 2.0.  The 900MHz Intel Celeron processor would be a concern for me, but if it behaves now, meaning if you're getting acceptable performance, I'd consider increasing the memory.  Your machine appears to have just 1 slot.  So you'd have to find one 2GB PC-3200 laptop memory module. 

I would not put a new hard drive in this machine, and I definitely wouldn't try upgrading the graphics or sound cards.  Those things, in my opinion, would not be worth it.  If you're looking to spend and additional 50 pounds, you can do better.  For example, if you don't have to have a laptop, I can tell you for under 50 pounds, I bought a used Dell OptiPlex 755 Small Form Factor desktop PC with an Intel Duo Core 2.3GHz processor, 160GB hard drive, Intel HD Graphics, and 4GB of RAM (upgradeable to 8GB) on eBay.  It also came with a 1 year warranty.  I bought it last month for a relative.  It's running Linux Lite 2.4 very nicely.

[paul1149]

The only things upgradable are the hard drive and RAM. I'm not sure if the chipset would see more than 2GB of RAM. Do you need 500GB of hard drive? If not, put the money in a smaller but faster 7200 rpm drive, or a small SSD. But be careful of used older SSDs, some are pretty bad.


The unit was well-built and was originally intended for XP, and it should run great on LL.

[rokytnji]

I used to be a moderator at eeepc forums.
Graphics? Its a intel chip on the motherboard. Don't bother. Not upgradeable.
Ram? 2 gig is the way to go.
Celeron? Runs OK even compared to this atom n270 I am running now. Not upgradable.
500 gig HD. The 904 makes this easy peasy to switch over. Not like the 700,701, and 900.
Back when I was a moderator at eeepc forums. 904 was the bees knees for being a desirable kit to own.

[rokytnji]

Durn, the heat has gotten to me.

Code:

$ inxi -W 79772
Weather:   Conditions: 96 F (35 C) - Clear Time: August 3, 2:05 PM CDT

I totally missed that you are running 2.0 already. My bad.

[Wirezfree]

I guess the simple question(s)

Is it doing what you want it to.?
Is it slow,? 2GB memory will help.?

If you don't need more storage, just faster, a small 64GB SSD will make big improvement.

My daughters old Sony Vaio Net-book, 1st generation dual core Celeron, integrated graphics, had 1GB mem, and old 80GB Toshiba HD, boot time 28/30secs
upgraded to 2GB, and small Samsung SSD 64GB, now boots in 16/18secs, and is very smooth.

[justme2]

I run LL2.4 on two eeePCs, a 901 with 1GB ram, LL2.4 installed on a 32GB class 10 sdhc (because the primary disc is only 4GB SSD) and a 701SD with 1GB ram, 8GB SSD with LL2.4 installed and a 16GB sdhc in the card reader for data. Both work absolutely fine and fast, play video & audio well with VLC and extra storage can be added by either USB hard disk or usb memory stick without making any internal upgrades. Forget what is sometimes said about flash memory wearing out quickly, my 901 main drive is as I said a 32GB sdhc and has been in almost daily use for about 4 years and has had lots of distros installed for testing. I've now settled with Linux Lite.

You didn't say what uses your PC has, but I doubt you need do no more than add extra storage by USB hard disk (approx. £25) or class 10 sdhc. (approx. £12 for 32GB)

Hope that is of some help and encouragement.

[austin.payne]

You might also think about a sshd. Instead of going with a straight up ssd. If that doesn't work then you could try a scratch partition.

[newtusmaximus]

Increase RAM to max and then suggest you buy an external  portable  USB HDD.  Use the latter for storage of infrequently used files/photos etc. and use the  internal HDD as your day to day storage and temp files.  Also the external HDD can be used to back up etc.  I have an old Tosh sat Pro A10 on wifi  with a similar spec to yours  running LL 2.4 and it is fine for day to day brwosing and emails etc -  If you have good broadband speed, you can use the cloud (free) for short term back up as well.