Unfortunately, few people consider their future requirements when they buy a new laptop. An upgrade to the hard drive or RAM may be required in a short time to help keep programs running smoothly.

Consideration is given to some of the limited upgrades which might be applied to the average laptop.

Some manufacturers' of laptops allow for a range of upgrades, however others ensure it is very difficult to upgrade anything other than RAM and the hard drive.

The hard drive is usually quite easy to change in a laptop. There is normally a small door in the base of the case or sometimes a covered slot on the side of the laptop. Some manufacturers make changing the hard disk harder when the whole case needs to be opened to exchange it. A number of different drive interfaces are used so care must be taken to obtain the correct kind of hard disk. Recently, solid state hard drives are increasingly being incorporated into laptops and netbooks; these are usually more difficult to change though.

Adding additional RAM into a laptop will often be the simplest upgrade that can be done to a laptop. Most laptops possess a small door on their underside by which extra RAM might be added, however, some manufactures require that the laptop keyboard or complete case is removed to get to the RAM socket or sockets. Care should be taken to buy and insert exactly the correct type and speed of RAM chip as there have been many design changes over the years.

After upgrading the RAM and hard drive the next consideration could well be whether to upgrade the processor. This can be much more difficult and expensive than the later but it will give an increased operating speed. Unfortunately, to access the CPU the laptop will need to be completely deconstructed; this would normally only be a job for an experienced user as it is easy to damage the laptop motherboard. Occasionally, processor chips can not be changed or upgraded as they're not in a socket but are soldered on the motherboard, this is often the case with netbooks.

The video chip can rarely be upgraded unless the laptop manufacturer has designed a separate video board connected to the motherboard via a socket. Video cards will almost always be very expensive and must be exactly matched with the make and model of laptop, so this upgrade may not worthwhile.

If you would like a faster WI-FI connection then an upgrade of this card may be necessary. Generally, this is easy and cheap, however some makes of laptop make access difficult by placing it below the keyboard rather then a door underneath.

Think very carefully and do your research before purchasing a laptop as upgrades will always be expensive and are not always possible for all makes and models. Laptops are normaly more upgradeable than netbooks though if you require full upgradeability then perhaps a desktop pcshould be considered.

Graham Kelly is an expert at mending broken and damaged laptops and USB RAM drives at Trilogic UK Ltd. He has spent over 30 years in the electronics industry specializing in electronic design and repair. He has written a lot of articles relating to laptop and notebook faults to assist users diagnose and possibly attempt simple laptop repairs by themselves where appropriate. He is always happy to give technical advice and can be contacted at Trilogic's internet site for laptop repair or USB data recovery.

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