upgrading old laptop

[Ashura]

I found this old laptop at work that's been sitting around gathering dust for 4+ years. Decided to take it home, check it out and found out it still works! I'm thinking of using this as a basic web browsing, online chatting, alternative to whenever my PC is out of commission because of part swapping or stress testing, etc. Obviously, that sort of thing doesn't require much which is great as this laptop isn't the snappiest thing on the block. I identified it as a Toshiba Satellite 2405-S201 and found the specs here:

http://www.csd.toshiba.com/cgi-bin/...BV_EngineID=cccdadeehdfkedlcgfkceghdgngdgnj.0

I've never messed with laptops before and I'm wondering what I can do to make the most of it. The first thing I thought of is to get this thing WiFi enabled with a cheap USB adaptor. Next idea was to swap out the 256 stick in there with one 512 (512 max mem sucks ). Then I wondered about maybe replacing the hard drive.

Any thoughts or ideas? The WiFi adaptor is the only thing I'm dead set on, I just have no idea if the memory or HD upgrade, or any other upgrades you guys can think of, would be worth it.

 

[Know Nuttin]

Are you sure the laptop supports 512MB in a single slot? Crucial is showing it as only supporting 256MB/slot.

Given it's only usb 1.1, you should probably consider a pcmcia wifi card.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833320105
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833156140

The hard drive is a good choice and good idea.

That's about all that is worth upgrading on it, to be honest.

 

[Ashura]

Good catch on the RAM, I'll go with one more 256 stick, the ASUS wifi card you pointed out and the hard drive. With tax and shipping that comes out to $130... which isn't too bad of an investment considering I paid nothing for the laptop and it's just handy to have around.

Thanks for the tips Know Nuttin!

 

[Ashura]

Hrm, not sure what my problem is. I got the DWA-652 PCMCIA card and set it up on the laptop. I have all my security configurations right (the MAC ID is in my router's MAC filter, and it's registered to get a specific IP address, and I'm using the correct WPA2 pass). But for some reason, I only stay connected to the internet for about a minute until I no longer have internet access. It shows the laptop as still connected to the network, but if you look at the adaptor properties, you can see that it's not receiving anything. I have to reset the adaptor to get the connection back, and again the internet only lasts a minute. I've determined this isn't due to the specific adaptor by using multiple PCMIA cards, older and newer, which do work on other laptops.

Am I missing something? As far as I can tell this laptop should be fully compatible with the adaptor, and age shouldn't be a reason for it to have this problem.

 

[Ashura]

Huh, didn't do a thing but it works fine today. Must've been a fluke.