Art'noon all,

Many thanks for the advice received so far. I have learned much of advantage.

Brief summary of where I am now. Medically retired business project/programme manager looking to get back into part time freelance work, preferably within commuting distance of Chorley in Lancashire but I will negotiate

I recently bought an HP 6910p laptop from another forum member (and will recommend him to anyone) am am working on fettling it to suit my needs. Funds are limited until I start billing someone (any volunteers? ) but I do have time available at the moment.

I also have a good desktop (also via this forum with thanks) and a spare desktop I'm looking to convert to a file server anon.

For now I'm using this setup:

- LibreOffice for word processing, spreadsheet, database (low level), presentations

- MS Office if required

- gmail as mailtool, contacts, calendar (synced to android phone)

- Firefox for browsing (much of this as I do research) and development (just getting going)

- Cintanotes for notes on the PC, synced via Simplenotes to Jadenotes on my android phone

- Filezilla for ftp

- Textpad for extended text manipulation.

I also have a PortableApps setup on a 32GB usb3 in case I'm using a strange system.

My laptop usage will be the usual business stuff (documents, spreadsheets, calendar, contacts etc.) plus browser-based research/notes capture. I'm also developing a php/mysql-based family history website and am starting to look further into other web-based app development.

I've recently downloaded Oracle's data modelling tools and have a couple of others in consideration.

I'm not into games (except for Solitaire, of course ) as I've been a business/technical computer user/geek for over 30 years so I don't want to spend even more time in front of one playing games. 'Er indoors, on the other hand ... mind you she has her own laptop so I should be safe

We have a fair amount of older peripheral kit (XP) and would like to continue to use it. I'll only find out over time what I can make work and what not.

Next steps.

I want to extend the onboard disk as funds permit but I'm not sure of the tradeoffs between disk capacity, speed and power consumption on this particular setup. I have 80GB and would like to go to about 500GB if possible.

RAM at 2GB will stay there unless I upgrade to 64bit in the future - see previous thread for the debate: http://www.briskoda.net/forums/topic/269186-win7-32-or-64-bit/

I'm investigating Readyboost (thanks Web Ferret), initially by using a 1GB usb dongle. I have an unused SD/MMC card slot where I could leave a Readyboost device plugges in, so I'm interested in what spec, size etc. for something that works and whether there are any practical limits to how much RAM the system will benefit from. Mickysoft's Readyboost notes are here: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows7/using-memory-in-your-storage-device-to-speed-up-your-computer

If you've read this far thanks for your patience. Much appreciated.

Any suggestions, ideas so far?

Regards, Mike

I really recommend bumping up the ram to at least 4GB. Especially if you have a slow hard drive. Forget Readyboost, its utter and complete rubbish. You need more ram. You can never have enough ram. Muahahaha! *evil laugh*

Also, your computer has Penryn support, so I also recommend going for a Penryn CPU. The T9300 is in a very attractive price range atm, but the low end T8100 is a good candidate as well. I was running a T8100 for a very long time in my Thinkpad and its a pretty good cpu, cool running and extremely undervoltable. Cheap as hell too.

At this point, an SSD is almost a must. Go for a hybrid drive or a dual drive setup. The latter is quite a bit quicker, but it will cut your battery life in half.

As a quick comparison, my thinkpad, which has the same chipset, has the following specs. Anything that works on mine should work on yours, assuming you have the newest BIOS. Aside from Dual IDA, you have no support for that.

C2D T9300, Dual IDA @ 2.7Ghz (T9500 or X9000 are two faster options, but nothing else works)

8GB DDR2 Crucial

OCZ Vertex 3 128GB + 500GB Momentus in Ultrabay

Intel GMA X3100

Windows 8 Pro x64

Edited 25 March, 201313 yr by DaKKs_152

Honesty, don't spend that much. Laptops don't last forever and they're a bitch to get parts for and to fix.

Get a new 7200rpm HD, (http://www.ebuyer.com/255282-wd-500gb-black-mobile-drive-wd5000bpkt). SSD is an expensive option but makes a big difference.

Memory is cheap but tends to get more expensive as the newer types become popular. Best to buy it while its cheap even if you don't need it now.

Readyboost is pants unless you have a very slow machine.

My honest suggestion is to make minor improvements but budget for a replacement. Laptops don't last as long as desktops.

If this is also a business machine you will rely on you'll have to consider backups and redundancy. i.e. how will you work if it goes FUBAR.

The 6910p is a very well built machine. Normally, I'd agree with you, but this time, there is a solid base to work with. In my opinion, its worth it. Maybe not max it out as I did with my R61, but 4gb ram, a penryn cpu and an SSD seems appropriate.

I spent maybe three times the purchase price on my Thinkpad R61. Yes, its slightly outdated, but the keyboard is a dream to write on, the screen is impeccable, the battery life is great and it still packs quite a punch.

EDIT: And my two advanced docks have a HD6450 and HD5770 respectively. So gfx power isn't an issue either.

Edited 25 March, 201313 yr by DaKKs_152