Hi I have a 6-year old Dell Laptop - Inspiron 3800. It used to have windows ME as an operating system and would frequently crash. Since I upgraded it to XP, it has been more stable. However, it is running a bit slow. Which is probably a combination of the low RAM and only a 10 GB hard drive. I am wondering if it makes sense to upgrade the hard drive to something larger (like a Seagate 40 GB)-$100, and upgrade the RAM by putting in another 256 MB (another $100) which when combined with the 128 MB chip I have will give me 384 MB RAM. Will this upgrade help my computer run faster and also help me get atleast 2 more years from my computer?

I would not upgrade the harddrive for a performance reason. More space would be my reason to upgrade the harddrive. The ram would give you the best performance increase. I would spend another $15 for a 256 stick from Kingston or Crucial, or just get another 128, but I would get the memory from either Crucial or Kingston. Dell's can be a little temperamental in what ram works well. Either Crucial or Kingston will guarantee that their ram will work in your Dell.

I agree. A harddrive upgrade will not affect performance.

Thanks for the feedback. I have a follow-up question. Does it matter which brand of RAM I get. At memorysuppliers.com, they have a Kingston, MIcron, and Samsung. And there is a considerable price difference between the Kingston and the other 2 (almost 50 usd). Does it really matter which brand I get? Regarding upgrading the hard drive, is there a minimum amount of space I should have available on the hard drive. I also need to install some additional software which requires 180 MB free disk space (currently I have 5.28 GB free). Thanks

Usually 20-25% is where things start causing problems for hardrive sapce. Since you recently upgraded to XP, the default setting for system restore is 12%, you can reduce it to 4-5%, or turn it off completely to gain more space. If you turn it off, you know that a virus/trojan/worm packet can never hide in those protected files, and there will be no need to turn it off and restart should you get an infection. I thought my point about using Crucial/Kingston was quite clear. You can try the cheap stuff, just make sure you can return or exchange it, if it does not work in your Dell. There is nothing worse than getting system errors due to ram.

Good advice from Cptn. I would add check the max memory your laptop will run as some of the older ones cut of at 512 or less. Cheers Stewart Bit of a wit....half to be precise.

Thanks for the input. Appreciate it.