On next week I'm gonna upgrade my laptop little bit. I change my normal 2,5" Seagate 100GB 7200rpm 8MB SATA harddrive to OCZ Core 32GB SSD SATA. I also change my 2X1GB PC5300 CL5 G.Skill to 2x2GB PC5300 CL4 memorys. Not sure how much speed I get but that upgrade costs around 200 euros. Of course much more when I sell old parts. Later I order warranty because fan is too loud. They should change motherboard and processor so I hope Core Duo>Core 2 Duo for free Other wise I have to buy processor myself. I inform more later...
I hope you are running XP as vista would fill a 32gb hdd pretty quick. And unless you are running a 64bit OS you won't be able to use all 4gb of ram either. Under normal use i would say you will not see any improvement in performance by adding more ram. Your best bet would be to put a better cpu in, the latest core 2 duo's are blazingly fast. I run a core 2 extreme X9000 cpu @ 3.4ghz and my laptop absolutely flys (very pricey tho!).
Totally true. I'm running heavily modified XP (of course) and it takes only 500MB space so 32GB isn't a problem. Because my CPU (Core Duo T2300) isn't 64bit capable I can't run 64bit OS and take advantage of 4GB memory. But but... I believe that upgrades lower my computer memory and hard drive latency a lot. Will see... C2D upgrade is coming too but I choose T7200. Parts are sold out so I have to wait a little bit more.
The new cpu will really help out, i run a T7700 on my xp laptop and it runs very nicely. The 4mb cache which the T7200 also has really makes a difference. Have you considered the newer T8 or T9 cpu's which are even faster and use less power?