Old Laptop Upgrade

[Barbusa]

My daughter has been given an old laptop by a woman that she occasionally babysits for.

It is a HP Pavillion ZE4500 series (Actual 4521EA) which is now quite dated but on the plus side it does have 512MB of RAM and a 80GB hard disk, which is more than sufficient for my daughter's needs.

The problem is that it is not wi-fi enabled and only has the basic USB ports!

I have a PCMCIA card that will make it wi-fi enabled but does anyone know of a way I can upgrade the USB to USB2.0?

As usual, any help on this would be much appreciated!

 

[Igorian]

Something like this perhaps?

You may not have enough space to use it in tandem with the wireless card though, however, this might not be a problem.

 

[Deluks]

512mb 80gb. Is that the original spec? doesn't sound that old to me, maybe the ports are usb2? My sony is about 4 years old only had 256mb and 40gb but USB2 came as standard. Maybe you need to reinstall drivers to enable usb2? There were teething problems with some mobos, and with XP when usb2 came out.

What operating system is it? if XP do you have service pack 2 installed?

 

[Barbusa]

I am not certain but I think that it may have been upgraded, in terms of hard disk and memory!

I have checked the HP site, downloaded the manual and I cannot find a mention of 'USB 2.0' or 'High Speed USB' anywhere.

The PCMCIA card USB 2.0 option is a good one but I was rather hoping to keep that slot free for the wi-fi adapter.

I could probably purchase a small USB wi-fi adapter but would I need USB 2.0 for that, or are there ones that work ok that use the basic USB?

 

[Deluks]

You need usb2 for 54mbps.

but how many usb2 ports are needed? external drives/memory card readers/flash memory drives/scanners will benefit from the extra speed, but mouse/keyboard/printer will all work fine in the usb1 ports.

You can up to 4 usb2 ports with the pcmcia devices, that should be plenty for anyone.