Can you upgrade the ram of a laptop?

Is it possible to increase the RAM in a laptop? My son has a laptop which, thanks to music (legal downloads) and photos, is becoming very slow. Without buying a new, more powerful laptop or having him remove his music and photos, is there anything we can do to increase the speed and performance?

Most laptops you can add or increase the Ram amount. There are some budget laptops out there in which you can't though. Without knowing your laptop model or specs, we can't tell you how upgradeable it is - however if you go to http://www.crucial.com/ you can scan your system and not only will it tell you the maximum amount of Ram you can stick in, it will tell you exactly what type you need to buy.

A computer will generally slow down if the hard drive is starting to get full, and there are lots of programs which are installed. To help get your computer responding faster, try removing any programs which you no are absolutely sure you longer need (in Control Panel -> Add or Remove Programs), and also defragment your disk (re-arranges the files in a faster & more logical manner) by going Start -> Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools -> Disk Defragmenter. Be aware that defragmenting your disk will take a long time.

Just downloading a lot of data to the hard disk does not generally make a computer slow. You might try running defrag to see if that perks performance up a bit. If your son is running server programs liek utorrent, emule, filezilla etc. these can certaily make a computer slower.

Without knowing anything about your system nobody can tell you if you are able to add RAM to it. If you do a web search of your model of laptop you might find some links to sites that can help you. You also might call tech support for your laptop to see if they can help you determine what kind of RAM your laptop takes and if you have a free slot.

well it is possible go to youtube and search for 'increasing virtual memory' its basicly ram on your hard drive

Yes you can add more ram to a laptop. It is very easy, my husband did it for me. Did you trying going to the website of the company that makes the laptop? Sometimes companies have really good discussion board that can help with any questions you have.