Ways to 'Spice up' a laptop?

Ummm... Some nice sticks of ram, new SSD and a can of air???

cover it in nascar racing stickers???

Racing stripe...maybe two.

Also, if you use a hunt-and-peck style of typing, scratch off all the letters on the keyboard and try your hand at typing again.

+1 turbineTom

Performance wise? There are many ways to tweak and optimize any windows computer to make it run faster. Basic stuff like running CCleaner, Auslogic Disc Defrag, as well as getting some freeware like Auslogic Boostspeed. You can find all of these for free on download.com

And of course taking it apart and keeping it clean and dust free will keep temps down and extend the life. Depending on what laptop you have, you can upgrade the CPU or there are even ways to OC your current cpu if you have the skills necessary.

Always make sure their is airflow underneath and around that baby, heat is one of a notebooks worst enemies!

A pack of markers and any 2 year old!

Hungarian hot paprika would do it.

get one without an OS, buy an OS, and make a fresh install sans all those pointless third-party manufacturer installed programs. time consuming; yes, but with 20 or so less processes running in the background for a boost in speed, so very much worth it. and i'm dealing with an AMD E-350 here.

Buy.com has the Cooler Master Notepal U2 onsale for $19.99 plus a $10 MIR

I picked one up off amazon from $12.99 last week and they are very nice for the price. Sleek and really help with cooling, fits a 15" laptop perfectly

A SSD, hands down will transform the performance of your laptop.
Laptop drives are selected for their low power use, and are not great performers.

three words: ess ess dee

On the back of the screen engrave the words "STOLEN FROM" and add your name. A good way to get to know the local police.

to spice it up coriander paprika or an ssd I would say.

agree with all that, and add on that they need to be designed to be shockproof and have mechanisms to save themselves from being shaken around.

Imagine picking up your desktop case and shaking it around couple hours each day and/or mild drops; that's basically what your laptop harddrive has to put up with.

SSDs don't need the compromises to deal with the above mechanical issues

wow, lots of results. are SSDs possible on ultrabooksoh sorry, Sleekbook.


if so, i know people  

any way to improve graphics?

I would think so. laptop hard drives are 2.5" standard drives as a rule.
Most laptops are designed to be able to be serviced which means replacing the drives.
It is not difficult to clone a laptop hard drive to a ssd. If the replacement ssd will not hold all your existing stuff, then you will need to do a windows reinstall on the ssd and copy over what you need.

Some google searches with your particular model number and ssd as search terms might find you more info.

And.. no, laptop graphics are not changeable.

i could get a hybrid, best of both worlds

Music industry man: What kind of song do you want?
Cartman: Something hot and spicy!
[melody comes on]
Cartman: Spicier.
[melody changes]
Cartman: Spicier!
[spicy melody comes on]

[Jennifer Lopez (aka Eric Cartman's left hand)]
Burrito. Taco taco. Burrito. Taco. Taco taco.
Don't think just because I got a lot of money,
I'll give you taco-flavored kisses, honey.
Fulfill all your wishes
with my taco-flavored kisses.

A hybrid drive is a decent compromise if you need the space.
Better than a hard drive, but not as good as a SSD.

If you don't need the space a SSD is better. Perhaps use an auxiliary external usb drive for storage.
Put the hard drive you exchanged the SSD for in an external enclosure.

Give it a manly hot pink paint job.

Submerge in a Phall sauce.

steampunk it

depending on the laptop you might be able to find a converter bay to change the ODD to a HDD spot, this would give you an SSD(OS)+HDD(Storage)

an ODD is almost not needed anymore, and you can buy an enclosure for your old one if need be

i might overclock my GPU if i can.

Ehh.. clarification. In many cases the GPU is changeable... If it is dedicated, and there are GPUs available that use a similar socket.


But an important thing to note is that the upgrade is costly, and normally not worth it.. and sometimes might require a little DIY modding on the heatsink.

If you head over to the ROG or NBR forums you'll find a few people who've been able to cram a 6970m into laptops that would normally carry a 5870m... etc So it is def. possible, just a lot of work on your part.