Best hardware changes to make to a AOA110 ZG5?

Evening all

Just became a member of the Acer Aspire One owners club today with a 2nd hand XP machine off ebay woohoo

Really pleased with my purchase so far, but it needs a few improvements I think:

Mine has the 8GB SSD drive, when I got it it was almost unusable because the previous owner had totally filled the drive! Deleted a few files and now its loads better, but its got me thinking about whether this SSD is going to be sufficient for my needs (purely in terms of speed)

This is my travel PC so I don't really need huge storage space, but speed is very important as I'd like to be able to stream internet radio pretty much all the time when the machine is on.

Is the 8GB SSD fast enough to just use as a system drive if I use an external HDD for files? I always thought a setup like that would be mega fast.....or should I swap it for a larger SSD or a fast spinning hard disk?

Is it worth adding RAM and upping the processor too?

Or shall I just reinstall XP and leave the hardware alone for the all difference it would make?

Would appreciate any ideas/suggestions on what to do here........

Thanks in advance!

 

1. You can't replace the processor, it's soldered on the motherboard.
2. You can only upgrade to 1.5GB of ram and it probably has 1GB anyway, so no great benefit(and requires a total dismantle to upgrade).
3. Install flashfire (search the forum) as this makes a big difference in performance.
4. Reinstall XP and use a big memory card for all your storage.
5. You can't replace the SSD with a hard drive it doesn't fit. You can replace it with a bigger SSD( but just use a big memory card instead)
6. You should find it fine for all internet use and playing most media apart from HD content.

Hope this helps and you will find all you need on the forum somewhere.

 

Do not provide wrong information...

http://aspireoneuser.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=637
http://aspireoneuser.com/forum/viewtopi ... &start=120

 

OK point taken. Maybe I should have said standard hard drive.

 

Thanks for the responses both-

I'm having trouble deciding what to do now, they don't supply you with much information about the specs of the machine in the paperwork that came with it but found this on wikipedia:

The A110 model ships with an 8 GB or 16 GB solid-state drive (SSD), although some models do not come with one. Early 8 GB models come with the Intel Z-P230, model SSDPAMM0008G1. This SSD has been criticized for its slow read and write speed. Intel lists the drive's maximum speeds as 38 MB/s read and 10 MB/s write.[26] Later models come with the slightly faster Samsung P-SSD 1800

Hmmmm this is not looking good, I'm guessing the drive probably needs to go, flashfire may speed it up but it sounds like a poor design......while I'm there I may as well chuck in some more RAM (1.5mb doesn't sound like much but its a 50% increase so fingers crossed)

OK can anyone help me answer any of these questions then I should be able to make my decision and either take it apart or leave it alone:

1. Does the Intel Z-P230 8GB SSD contain an internal battery?

2. Anyone done a SSD upgrade and improved system performance? If so with what drive?

3. Does swapping the SSD for a HDD sacrifice battery life?

3. Anyone done a RAM upgrade that could recommend it?

4. Can I use 2 SDHC cards in the machine at the same time? Any max size?


I bought a USB DVD drive for it yesterday so I'm going to reinstall XP anyway when hat arrives, from what I've read this machine is pretty slow with factory settings so I'm not holding out much hope for it.......

But its still a little bit faster than my 4GB T5800 Core 2 Duo Acer 7730 running V1sta, man that OS sucks so bad...... I reckon with a few tweaks this machine could probably even replace it

 

Ok thought I'd post a follow up comment..........

The DVD usb drive arrived the other day so I set about re-installing XP.....Took a grand total of 5 hours to complete the install lol

That includes removing all the bloat that comes with this OS and installing Flashfire, AVG free and Mozilla- I think part of the reason it took so long was that I didn't restart it after removing every program and the system speed pretty much ground to a halt bwhile installing AVG....

I now am the proud owner of a whole 2.11GB of free space on the 8GB SSD which is about the most I can hope for, this is just for the OS and programs but absolutely nothing else so should be plenty......

Bought a 16GB SDHC class 4 card from play for £16 and that seems to be pretty fast- this will be my main drive for files and media.

I'd like to say thank you to avio for the advice- this system is running sooooooooo much faster now- its absolutely perfect the way it is for me and I see no reason for any further improvements or expenditure-

Its totally everything I had hoped it would be and I'm so pleased with it........ I've got it connected at home to a 22" monitor with a USB mouse, keyboard and a pair of monitor speakers and its almost like having a desktop that I can throw in a bag and use on the train....awesome!