MiSo

upgrading ram makes things go alot faster.
hard drive just lets you hold more information.

i googled your laptop, it holds up to a gig of ram.
it has two slots for ram which means you can max it out by buying two 512 sticks of ram.
one 512 stick of ram will cost you about $90 on ebay.
a 256 stick of ram will cost about $60 in stores (dont know how much they'll be on ebay)
Ram upgrade is plug and play. just unscrew the plate under your laptop, drop the ram in and you're set. (you can do this yourself, but make sure you buy the right type)

if you use a slimline type hard drive, it's a piece of cake changing it out.
all you do is swap out the hard drive, format it, and use the recovery disk that came with your laptop. (this you can also do yourself)

ps- if you're laptop uses PC2700 ram, i've got a 256 mb stick of ram i'd be willing to sell.

if any of my terms confused you, dont worry... all these things can be found on google easily.