Hi,

 

I have a 2-3 year old Vostro 1710, T5670 (1.8GHz) CPU, 2G Ram, and 160GB WD Hard Drive, currently running Windows Vista Ultimate 32 bit. I would like to give this a speed boost, and I am thinking of replacing the hard drive with a 320/500 GB 7200 RPM drive (WD Caviar Black or Seagate Momentus 7200.4), upping the RAM to 4GB, and possibly changing the CPU to something faster. I was looking around, and have seen some postings here by others who have changed to a T/P8100, T9300/9500. Is the T7XXX series usable with this machine, or how about a T8300? The Bios is A10 right now, but I can update it to the A12 on the support site if this is required for the new CPU. I am looking for snappier overall performance, to put off replacement of this machine for another year or two.

Also, if I was to update the OS to WIndows 7, would it still be able to use the video camera and microphone, as the Vista drivers are installed and working fine, so will they continue to be used in Windows 7 (32 bit)?

 

Kostas

P.S. The machine only has the integrated video, so I know it would be a little unbalanced in terms of graphics vs. CPU power, but I don't run games or any heavy graphics on it; I have a quad core desktop for that.