advice please

Joined: Oct 21, 2007 Posts: 1

hi guys, im new here and i wonder if anyone could help me. i bought the girlfriend a dell inspirion 1501 for going to uni, amd turion 64 x2, 1gb ram... and vista which i know needs probably 2gb or ram to move but i assumed it would be fine for her to muck about on, write reports, go on bebo etc. but to be honest ive a computer i bought ten years ago that im sure could give this a run for its money. cash was a bit strapped at the time and this was a really good deal but im thinking i should have just spent a few more pennies. anyway, girlfriend refuses to let me send it back leaving her without a laptop even though it seems there is a problem with the bios... dont think drivers for the battery were installed to every time you turn the computer on you have to wait a few seconds for it to say "cant detect the battery" and you to press any key before it starts loading up windows. windows detects the battery though and it charges fine once it is on. it also refuses to shut down... id say half the time it restarts on its own after a few minutes. would drive me mad but she doesnt mind. anyway, my question is do you think it would increase the performance noticeably if i upgrade the ram to 2gb? or should i sneakily send it back when she aint looking? sorry about rambling on.

cheers,
jon

Joined: Dec 05, 2002 Posts: 22

Ok, there are a lot of things to consider based on your girl's needs. Essentially, this is almost mandatory, if she doesn't already have one get her an external hdd so she can atleast back-up all her work. If you don't have one, at the very least have her burn important files regularly to dvd or cd for emergencies. It seems a lot of work but if you've ever had a major pc meltdown you'd know the true value in this practice. Second, the computer. I don't like the battery issue, that's unacceptable and i don't know that it is the bios causing that. It could be the battery itself, maybe replace it if necessary but as long as it's just that lil annoyance, well, i wouldn't feel comfortable. It could go out on her at the most crucial of moments; uncacceptable.

The bios, i actually flashed a friend's notebook's bios when i had it in for re-install in my spot. It sounds like you purchased it recently so i'd check the oem's site asap for a bios. You only need to update to the latest version, it has all the fixes of the previous. Interestingly enough, i believe his was a 1501 as well Smile

..hehe, small world.

...google'n...

ok, turns out the battery message is the bios. There's a bios upgrade available that fixes this specific issue. I'd get it soon as possible.

http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/download.aspx?c=us&cs=19...p;l=en&

As far as ram, being Vista..i'd highly recommend 2gb... especially being a notebook since they're known to share system ram w/ the GPU (video card). i'd also look for whatever updates you can get while at Dell's site.
http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/driverslist.aspx?c=us&cs...&l=

^^ make sure you change it to Windows Vista, default is Windows XP.
k. good luck.