WASHINGTON, 30 September 2003 — The common wisdom about upgrading your notebook computer has usually boiled down to one word: Don’t. The reasoning was that notebook computers were both too difficult and too expensive to upgrade.

Often, components had to be purchased directly from the manufacturer — or the machine had to be sent in. Either way, it was a costly proposition. What’s more, an upgrade to one subsystem of the notebook — the hard drive, for example — still left other components of an aging system wanting. The old notebook, in other words, was better off being replaced than upgraded.

But with the passing of time has come progress. Today’s notebook computers are generally far less proprietary than yesterday’s, meaning that off-the-shelf components can be purchased in some cases and swapped with those that came with the portable. Even better, component prices are way down from yesteryear. It used to be that you’d pay as much as 200 percent more for notebook components such as hard drives as you would for their desktop equivalents. Not any more.

There are two obvious areas of today’s notebook computers that can easily be upgraded: The hard drive and the memory. Other components can be upgraded as well, using off-the-shelf parts.

* More Notebook Storage

Today’s notebook computers feature hard drives in the range from 20 gigabytes (GB) up to around 60 GB. You may have found that the bargain-priced notebook that you purchased a few months ago with a 20 GB hard drive is now bursting at the seams. Twenty gigabytes is not the unlimited amount of space that it once seemed.

Thankfully, most notebook computers today uses standard 2.5-inch miniature hard drives that are readily available from sources other than your notebook vendor. CMS Peripherals (http: www.cmsproducts.com product_notebook.htm), for example, offers replacement hard drives for a range of current notebook models. Thirty to 40 GB models these days can be found for less than $200.

If you’d like to up not only the storage but also the speed of your computer, look for notebook hard drives that spin at 5400 revolutions per minute (rpm). With a faster hard drive, you’ll notice that applications load more quickly. The really good news about notebook computer hard drive upgrades, though, is how easy they are to install. Vendors these days aren’t discouraging users from upgrading their own hard drives; in fact, many provide instructions on how to upgrade the storage space of a specific notebook model by posting instructions online. Check with your vendor for details. In most cases, the hard drive is accessible by removing a few screws, popping out a hard drive tray, unscrewing the drive, and then putting the new drive in the way you took out the old.

Be sure to back up any data that you have, so that you can transfer it to the new hard drive. Installing the operating system on the new hard drive is typically simply a matter of inserting the original operating system disk into the CD-ROM and allowing Windows to format the new drive and install itself. Just make sure that you have your notebook computer set up to boot from the CD-ROM drive before you begin.

* Remember the Memory

There’s perhaps no component more important for good performance of the notebook computer than memory (RAM). Bargain-priced notebooks these days typically start out with 128 megabytes (MB) of RAM.

That’s too little RAM for just about anything. But there’s nothing wrong with buying a notebook with the minimum amount of RAM to get a good price and then turn around and upgrade the machine with cheaper memory from third-party vendors. Savvy notebook computer users are looking immediately to online memory sources such as Crucial.com (http: www.crucial.com) as a way to beef up their machine’s memory.

Since installing RAM is one of the most frequently requested upgrades of notebook computer users, vendors have typically made it easy to install your own RAM — or to swap out existing RAM and replace it. Upgrading the RAM usually comes down to finding out where it is installed on the underside of your computer, unscrewing a latch, and then wiggling the RAM module into place.

* Upgrades You Can’t Make

Still, it’s important to know which types of upgrades remain difficult or impossible to make on notebook computers so you can be sure to buy what you might need at the time you decide on which notebook model to purchase.

The video card is a frequently requested upgrade among notebook users. But it’s sometimes impossible and often difficult to replace the video card in a notebook PC. If you have a choice between notebook computers with “integrated graphics” and those with a dedicated graphics card, choose the latter if you place importance on how snappy your notebook feels. Integrated graphics cards cost less to implement, but their performance is not up to the standard of dedicated graphics cards.

Also, too, decide up front how large your screen should be and how much power your processor should have. These components remain impossible or too costly to upgrade on portable machines.

Thankfully, though, equipped with the right knowledge, you’ll find that owning a notebook computer today is not as restrictive as it was in years past. Upgrades abound, and the situation looks poised to improve.