Gateway recommendations

[PardeGT]

A lady at work contacted me about her son at home who has a Gateway Solo 2500 laptop (333 celly, 4GB, 32mb, 24x cdrom, win98).

The floppy drive quit working and needs replacing. I do not have the laptop here yet but from online it shows the floppy in a caddy and for around $50. I suppose this is propietary and a cheaper generic won't work?

Her son also wants to add a usb cdrw and a 40gb usb hard drive.

How would it compare to replacing the current hdd in contrast to the usb? I know the usb will only be 1.1 and will transfer slowly. I would probably need to copy the drive but I do not currently have a hdd adapter so I could clone the old hdd to the new one with my desktop. Also, not sure if this thing would have any propietary partitioning and if copying the drive would also include that. Looks like pricing would be about the same at $125 for either the usb or ide.

Any recommendations on the usb cdrw would be appreciated as I have not dealt with a usb type yet.

I would think this laptop would benefit greatly to more memory as stock is 32mb and I don't think any has been added. It can take up to 288mb.

Any comments pertaining to this endeavor would be appreciated especially toward the cdrw and hdd.

Thanks.

[Floppyman]

Is he just planning on using the USB harddrive as a storage drive? If not, I think replacing the internal harddrive might be a better idea. HTH

[PardeGT]

Yes Timo, I think so mostly.

[glc]

If you are going to be loading up the USB, stuff as much ram as you can get in it. Even so, expect maximum 4x burn speeds. A PCMCIA cd-rw would be a better way to go, that's really SCSI. I have a Microsolutions Triple Play burner, it works parallel, USB, and PCMCIA. It's supposed to be 8x capable through PCMCIA, but on my 233 laptop with 64 ram it coasters over 4x with the Microsolutions Speedy CD software, I haven't tried it with Nero yet. It also coasters over 2x on USB.

Any hard drive upgrade on that machine may have bios capacity issues, be prepared to use an overlay.

Is fixing it and upgrading it cost effective? I don't think so - you are looking at $400 in parts alone to fix the floppy and add storage, ram, and a burner - and it will still be a 333 MHz machine.

[PardeGT]

Thanks glc. for right now it will probably be just the floppy as the mother will pay for this. Anything else the son would have to pay for. Just looking around right now and then give them the info I find and let them decide.

Will a usb 2.0 PCMCIA card transfer at 480mb/s when the laptop itself uses the usb 1.0/1.1 protocol?

This LiteOn with SmartBurn and Nero looks like a decent option for the price.

Fortunately, up till this point I've never used an overlay. How hard is this, what steps does it involve?

Thanks.

[glc]

Check the minimum system recommendations for the card and make sure it's Win98 compatible - I don't know if you need SE or whether FE will be ok.

Overlays are just a bad idea.

[PardeGT]

So, if he really wants to go this route and put the money into this system it would be best to get a compatible usb pcmcia and and external hdd.

Thanks, I'll pass along the info and look around for a good comparible system that they could upgrade to for near the same price. Any reasonable places besides eBay for used notebooks?

[Floppyman]

I've always liked Dell's refurbished notebook page. You can find some good deals there. HTH