Hi! Here are my specs:

Lenovo ThinkPad W500

Intel Core 2 duo CPU P8800 @ 2.66GHz

3GB DDR3 1066MHz Physical memory

150GB Seagate hard drive at 7200 rpm

ATI Mobility FireGL V5700 Video Card

Windows XP Pro 32 bit SP3

SolidWorks 2010 SP5

I consider myself a novice when it comes to computer so I would like to get opinions about upgrading options and the best way to do it!

I know the W500 can support up to 8GB of ram so here's what I would like to do. I would like to purchase a new HDD (SSD maybe?) to swap the old one and to install a fresh version of Windows 7 Pro 64 bit, while keeping the current setup intact in case things go bad. Then I could put in the 8GB of ram.

I would like to upgrade because a few times I had solidworks telling me that it was running out of memory and I needed to close some applications. I'm working on assemblies of 2000 parts with less than 200 unique parts. I'm not doing any render of FEA.

Is it worth the hassle? Would the upgrade extend the life of my machine enough or it's better to suck it up and wait to buy a brand new workstations?

Thank you for your time.

Patrick