I want to upgrade my Sony Vaio PCG - 731, Any ideas???

Question

I was just given a Sony Vaio PCG-731 and want to upgrade it to use the internet and maybe watch short trailers and such with ease and without it taking a long time to load. I am willing to put some money into it; but nothing over board (around maybe $150 give or take). It currently has a Hitachi 10GB Hard Drive and a 64MB. Any feed back would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

First, it only has a 200mhz processor, and memory maxes out at 128mb, and it only has 2mb onboard video memroy. So don;t expect too much - bout you knew that already.

Stick with WIndows 98 - do not upgrade it to XP.
You will need an ethernet card, since that is not built in. Either a wireless Type II card or wired - depending on how you are going to connect.

Find out if you have two 32mb sticks of memory or one stick of 64mb. To max out memory, you will need two sticks of 64mb. Just take the cover off and look.

If/when you get it going, uninstall any software you are not going to use. Essentially, just an OS and browser. Get a simple antivirus program like Grisoft AVG - not something comlicated like Norton - your machine won't handle it. You may even want to switch to Firefox instead of IE as well.

Here is the manual for your laptop:
http://www.docs.sony.com/release/PCG731.PDF