So my brother in-law got a laptop from a friend and its not exactly the finest piece of tech for him but its what he could afford. Its a HP Compaq Presario v6000. Now you can google the specs and see that its not exactly a monster gaming PC but I want to get it as optimized as I can for him because its all he has. So software wise I know what I need to do to help clean it up. Now my question is what hardware upgrades would be the most cost efficient way to optimize his laptop? Any help or advise would be appreciated. This is basically the only place I trust on this. (before it was Toms hardware but because there is a ranking and reward system its more of a circle jerk now. Not bad but I am sure you understand why I prefer Tek Syndicate.)
Install OpenSUSE on it.
I would but neither of us has ever touched Linux.
Gaming on a Laptop is definitely not the best but try to cool it as good as you can.
The Hardware is not made to perform extreme for hours going so stop the gaming from time to time or you risk burning the mainboard.
If he has it stationary look that the cooling Grill is free from dust and that it has a minimum of 20cm space to the next object. Don't play if the Sun shines on it, it will increase the heat.
For performance upgrade there is not much you can do. If a SSD fits in your budget get one and store stuff on an external drive or USB stick.
Ram upgrade is sadly not supported so you have to get along the 2GB (hope have the right specs: here)
Hope I helped
JS
It's simple enough, if you add the time you need to read the install wiki on the opensuse.org site, and maybe some things on this forum to get you started, to the time you need to actually install it onto the computer, you'll actually save time in comparison to doing a full Windows 7 install and installing a similar collection of applications and updating the thing.
And not only that, but on older machines, Windows is really not an option lol. You really need the speed of linux...
It already has Windows 7 on it. Is not new and we did not build it. We just want to upgrade a bit. And we are just not fans of linux. :/
Yes thank you. But I will say he will not be doing much gaming. Just trying to make it seem less ancient.
get at least 4gb of ram, upgrade HD into ssd. If ur laptop savvy upgrade cpu and wifi card. Also if u get crazy install hakintosh OS on it.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpmDKM5kFK0
How can you tell if you've never tried it lol?
Especially since he's not going to use it for gaming, he would greatly benefit from using linux on the thing, the benefit is so huge that it cannot be described with words, trust me. WIndows 7 on a 2 GB RAM system is just a pain, but 2 GB is ample for any modern full featured linux desktop environment.
and not everyone loves linux like zoltan does lol
Then Linux is the way. SSD upgrade is probably not a good Idea in your price range anyway. I would not upgrade any components if the upgrading costs about 1/3 of the price for a new one.
Coming from Windows I would use something like Sabayon or Ubuntu, Your laptop should manage both.
Yeah well Linux is the way if you don't have fancy new hardware. Windows is freaking power hungry and Mac OS is for hipster and doesn't work on his AMD processor anyway.
Yeah, Linux is great for reviving old laptops. I still prefer Windows, though.
Who wants Mac OS? Linux is way better and beside hackintosh on an old laptop :/ and on a AMD chip. Not the way to drive.
Yeah sorry LordXenu but me and my brother are not "hipsters" or art students and we do not like starbucks and we are not white girls so we have no use for Mac OS. :/
Have you ever tried it? Do you know the difference in underlying infrastructure and technology between OSX and GNU/Linux or MS-Windows? If not, that is a pretty bold statement, that comes across as a testimony to ignorant prejudice, and although it's a running joke, and the remark could have been made as a joke, the thing that gave it away really is that you think you can speak for others, and projecting prejudice is not a nice thing to do in my opinion...
What leads me to this thought: why do you post a question for help, if you're not open to the answers by people that are trying to help. You're the one with the problem that needs a solution. In all honesty, technically there is no really satisfactory solution based on the MS-Windows software console for modern computing on that machine. OSX and GNU/Linux are the most low budget solutions, OSX is not possible due to the machine having an AMD chip, remains GNU/Linux, which offers you a choice of literally hundreds of completely different operating systems, from software consoles à la MS-Windows to completely open full featured operating systems used at the highest echelon of the technological or any other industry.
A good recommendation if you need a quick fix and a familiar operating system: why don't you give Android-x86 a go. It comes out of the box with GApps, and works just fine without touchscreen, and apps for just about every use case scenario you could dream of, are available for free or for a very low price. It works fine on AMD machines, and is free to download and use. You can also delete the GApps, go on f-droid, and get all of the open source apps you like if you're into privacy protection, more speed (GApps do slow down the Android experience quite a bit, but it will still be blazing fast on an AMD CPU with 2GB RAM), and more security. You could also try something new, something that isn't "hipster" but is incredibly popular because of the sheer performance and ease of use, and that is to install something like Manjaro on the machine. It's preconfigured to do everything you would do on a Windows machine, except blazing fast, secure, and reliably. That is if you can get past the prejudice of course...