Hi all,

I have a friend who has an Acer Travelmate 244LM laptop. Its quite old and still works well. I will be doing some upgrades on it for him next week in terms of RAM and HDD. In this laptop it is possible to change the CPU too and I am wondering if it is worth doing it for him or whether it will cause more problems than it solves.

The model has a Celeron 2.6Ghz CPU (socket 478) at present. I am looking at upgrading it to a Pentium 4 2.6Ghz (socket 478) or higher. I am planning on using a Northwood chip as I have been told that the Prescot chips generate more heat. Is this feasible/worth the hassle? Are there likely to be heat issues? He is not going to get another laptop until this one dies so this is simply about making this one a little faster for him. He uses it mainly for interenet, movies, music, and a few old games.

Any help on the this would be appreciated. Many thanks.

A Pentium4 at the same speed would probably be a bit faster in some applications due to the improved cache. However, it might generate more heat and his battery might run down quicker. Further, the processors supported by that laptop are probably mobile Socket 478 parts. Your best bet for finding those is on Ebay. I found a 3.2 GHz P4 there at a really low price.