Hi,

It's nice to see an article as useful as this, but what about the notebooks BIOS support for these upgrades? How can I tell beforehand whether if the BIOS supports bigger harddrives or faster CPU's?

Regards,

infernix

Hi,

In most cases you can easily check the website of the manufacturer for an updated BIOS. As a general rule of thumb it is safe to assume you can upgrade to a CPU that's mentioned as the highest possible clockspeed upgrade option for that particular make and model notebook.

So if it specs out at say 700MHz, don't expect a 850MHz CPU to run on it right away, it might work, but it also might not. Same applies to plugging in a Pentium III instead of a Celeron, if a Pentium III is not mentioned as a upgrade option for that particular make and model, you possibly won't be able to use that CPU.

In all cases it good measure to first see if the motherboard and BIOS support the type of CPU you want to buy, before buying it.

Best regards,

Sander Sassen

CEO, Hardware Analysis
Email: ssassen@hardwareanalysis.com
Visit us at: http://www.hardwareanalysis.com

as stated in the article (and which is also a fact) the manufacturers won't give this info. toshiba won't anyway. so, i'm just hoping for the best (see my topic about the portégé 7140)