Q: I have a Toshiba Laptop, and its battery life and speed suck. What are some upgrade i can get, so that next year when I go to University, I can use it in class.
A: You can usually get a long life battery for ANY model. This will improve its endurance, however they are usually too expensive for what they are. As for speed, it REALLY depends on the exact model. The motherboard specifically will limit what can be installed. Ram usually is not a problem, but it depends if both the slots are already in use, or if one is spare. Even if they are both used you can buy larger modules and install them in place of the old ones. That is cheap and easy. Also, if you are running Vista, I recommend installing XP instead. It just uses less resources. I have a Satellite Pro M40.I upgraded the Celeron M 1.4Ghz CPU to a Pentium M 1.73Ghz CPU. This increased the FSB from 400Mhz to 533Mhz. I then overclocked the newer CPU to 2.5Ghz using clockgen. I also overclocked the GFX card by 33%. These are only advisable if you know what you are doing and like to live riskily. Undervolting is another way to improve battery life too. Even just tweaking the powersaving features on it will help. But to be honest its a trade off of performance/endurance. Anyway, its more of an enthusiast thing to do. You may just be better saving up and getting a cheap one next year.