Extensa 5620-4020: upgrade or replace?

[Shemmy]

I have an Extensa 5620-4020 with the following specs:
3GB RAM (2GB+1GB), T2370 @ 1.73GHz, 250GB 5400RPM HD

I'm setting up Cisco and forensics/security labs for school, and I may need to use VMWare to work with Linux, Windows 7, and Windows 2008/R2.

I can upgrade my current laptop to a T7700 (2.4GHz, 800MHz FSB), 4GB of RAM, and a Seagate Momentus XT 500GB for about $350. Alternatively, I could build a whitebox notebook with an i3 or an i5 for $750-$850.

Which option would be better? I'd prefer not to spend the extra money if it's not neccessary, but I also don't want to spend $350 on upgrades that will only give me another year out of my laptop (it's currently three years old).

[downloads]

I would probably go for a new one. I suspect you could do pretty well within $750 budged and that would be a lot more future proof.
Sandy Bridge has some speed advantage over Arrandale and Arrandale had a pretty big one over Core 2 Duo series. Compare the benchmarks for T7700 against the slowest SB CPU or even decent Arrandale.

[oldcartfan]

Depends on what you're doing with the laptop. If you need a gaming rig, or doing heavy number crunching, faster processor and better graphics are worth the upgrade.

But my nearly three-year-old 5620 (T2370) always surprises me when I ask to do something heavy and rarely chokes. Upgrading to 2GB RAM and deleted Vista (in favor of Win7) made into a new machine years ago.

The scenario you laid out mentions VMware. From my experienceVMware is more of a memory-hog than a CPU-hog. It seems to me that 4GB is almost minimum for serious VMware use and 6-8GB is really nice to have.

Unfortunately, that's where the 5620 falls down. 4GB Max. and that's only if you're running a 64bit OS. If you're using 32-bit, 3GB is all you can run in a stable configuration. That's a chipset limitation, unfortunately. :{

While I sing the praise of the 5620 for "basic" stuff, it's probably time to upgrade if you really need that VMware. And I would budget 6-8GB RAM before a super fast CPU.

Just my $.02

[ToxicDog]

I have a 5620z-4025 Could you please give me some ideas or info on how to upgrade mine? It sounds like almost the same laptop. I have a 120GB 5400 HD
Here are the specs
Newegg.com - Acer Extensa EX5620-4025 NoteBook Intel Pentium dual-core T2370(1.73GHz) 15.4" Wide XGA 1GB Memory DDR2 667 120GB HDD DVD Super Multi Intel GMA X3100