Your Upgrade Path to Netbook Self-Realization

There’s no denying that netbooks possess many positive attributes, as evidenced by their meteoric rise in popularity. But all the attention garnered by their portability and low cost can’t mask the deep and troubling performance that netbooks suffer.

The fact is, there are undeniable trade-offs inherent to a sub-$400 computer. You’re just not going to get the same performance from a netbook as from something that costs three times as much. Slow single-core Atom processors; middling hard drives; pokey, undersized SSDs; and only 1GB of RAM rob the netbook of its potential.

But there is hope. Whether you have an old Eee PC with a 12GB SSD or a new netbook with an Atom N280 chip and a 160GB hard drive, you can make substantial improvements without forking over too much dough. We’ll show you first-hand how netbooks can overcome their humble beginnings. We’ll upgrade a typical older netbook—an Eee PC 901 with a 4GB SSD soldered on the mobo and an 8GB PCI-E SSD—as well as a brand-new Toshiba NB205, to show how every netbook, from bottom-of-the-barrel to top-of-the-line, can benefit from upgrades.

Consider this your guide on the journey to netbook empowerment.

Uplift Your Memory

Pep up your load times and app performance with more RAM

Adding more RAM is nearly always the cheapest and easiest way to upgrade your netbook. In order to get netbook pricing for Windows, manufacturers limit them to 1GB of RAM. Fortunately, most netbooks have easily accessible RAM slots and use standard 200-pin DDR2 SODIMMs.

 

We used a 2GB DDR2/667 SODIMM from Corsair for our upgrades. It costs less than the Twilight Blu-ray release.

For less than $25 online, you can buy a 2GB DDR2 SODIMM to replace the 1GB in your netbook—most have a single SODIMM slot, so you can’t just add another 1GB, and the Atom platform is limited to 2GB of RAM. We bought a 2GB Corsair ValueSelect DDR2/667 (PC2-5300) module—the Atom N280 platform in new netbooks has a 667MHz front-side bus; older netbooks with the N270 chip have a 533MHz FSB and will underclock the RAM.

In nearly all netbooks, replacing the RAM will take less than five minutes. First, power down your netbook and remove the battery. On the bottom of the chassis will be one or more panels that can be removed to reveal the RAM and/or hard drive, usually fastened with Philips-head screws. Open the panel and find the SODIMM. Release the clasps that hold it in, and the module should pop up slightly. Remove it and line up the 2GB SODIMM and slide it into place, then close the panel, replace the battery, and boot your netbook. Press F2 during setup to go into the BIOS and make sure the RAM registers, then boot your computer normally.

We upgraded the RAM in an older Asus Eee 901 and a brand-new Toshiba NB205 netbook and immediately saw the difference. The improvement was particularly noteworthy on the 901, which, thanks to its anemic low-cost solid state drives, has been the slowest netbook we’ve tested to date. Before the RAM upgrade, it took the 901 1,441 seconds to run through our Photoshop benchmark, compared with the 673 seconds it took the Toshiba NB205. But with 2GB of RAM, the 901 plowed through in a (comparatively) zippy 1,163 seconds—that’s nearly a 24 percent improvement. The NB205, on the other hand, dropped just 13 seconds with its RAM upgrade, due to its faster standard hard drive.