Laptop hardrive and Ram

I just bought a cheap laptop off eBay and have a few questions. First off how to I find out what sort of RAM I would need to upgrade it? And would any 2.5" Hard drive work?

Thanks in advance

Any EIDE 2.5 Drive should work. As for memory, does the laptop have any brand name? www.kingston.com... has a great memory finder, and good prices.

crucial.com also has a ram finder thing. if you don't find anything there, you can always pop the bottom ram cover off and look at the ram itself. it usually has a sticker indicating the speed.

Thanks alot you two.
Just so this isn't a one line post its a dell

reply to post by Matt Kilby


What you need to do is, with the laptop off, turn the laptop over-ie, upside down-carfully.

On the bottom should be a model number like Dell M1074 or something similar.

Once you have this, google "add ram for (insert model number here)", I do this all the time and it works great.

You can even look at the sponsored adds, as they will be trying to sell you the proper ram.

That said, I personall reccommend a min of 1 gig for xp, 2 gigs to run good.
For vista I reccommend 2 gigs, 4 to run well.

One thing you may want to check is, can you add more ram to your motherboard. I have a presario 2500 with 512 ram. I purchased a 1gig chip and it would not work. I upgraded my wifes more modern laptop with an extra 1 gig and all was ok.
some older laptops have the max ram that they can take already installed.