Can I still upgrade a Dell Latitude with Pentium 166 processor?

Question

My dad gave me his old laptop. It's a Dell Latitude with a Pentium 166 processor. It has been reliable until last year. The fan doesn't work and I think that caused it to overheat. It was able to support Windows 98 only. The power supply still works.

I plan to have it fixed, and while I'm at it, I was thinking if I would be able to upgrade the processor and the likes. I would like to give it my sister who's in college when I get it fixed.

Answer 1

You wont be able to upgrade the laptop. That is a very very old processor, and you're lucky to get it to work on windows 98.

There is also no point in getting it fixed because the laptop is so old, that it would be cheaper to get another laptop than to repair it. For example, you could get an old refurbished dell laptop for $300.00 that is 8 times faster.

Answer 2

Upgrading a laptop is a nightmare.

You have to take into consideration how much power the components are going to consume, and if the battery will support that.

Then you have to make sure the components wont inter fear with each other. Every component in a computer gives off some sort of radio interference, this will interfear with the processor, wireless, bluetooth, lcd, and other parts.

( I'm not nuts, if you don't believe me contact an RF (radio frequency) engineer.)

Answer 3

I'm all about keeping old computers up and running as opposed to just buying a new one ever year or two... BUT... when you have a machine of this era it's simply not practical. It's motherboard won't support a faster processor or enough memory to run many common modern programs which need Win XP.

It also won't support a hard drive of any size or modern USB devices. If this was a Pentium II 450 or better machine you could just make it usable and justify sinking a bit of money into it... but this would be a money pit.

Answer 4

just get a new one. fixing it will cost a lot.