Lenovo X301: Upgrade RAM or Replace

[blinx77]

I have a workhorse laptop that was top of the line -- in 2009. It is a Lenovo X301 with:
Windows 10 (64 bit) Intel Core 2 Duo U9600 @1.60GHz 4GB of Ram 125 GB SSD (only 29 GB used, I am not a space hog)

The laptop is getting somewhat slow, particularly if I am loading multiple tabs on chrome or I am accessing my work computer remotely through remote desktop. I am wondering:

(1) Should I upgrade this to 8GB RAM to give it another lease on life and then buy a new laptop in a year or so. This looks like it would cost $50 or so (https://www.amazon.com/Memory-IBM-Lenovo-ThinkPad-X301-DDR3-10600/dp/B009BS5XCW). Long term I hope to repurpose this into a kid's laptop (my daughter is almost three, so maybe she would need one in two or three years), so maybe the extra RAM could help further extend the shelf-life of this.

(2) Spend the money towards a new laptop now. I would probably get a Lenovo T460 or something similar (http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/t-series/t460/). I have an aversion to HP and lesser extent Dell due to past quality issues. I wouldn't spend the $2k that my dad dropped in 2009, so honestly the specs might be roughly similar except for a newer processor and fresh everything else (battery, screen, etc.)

We theoretically get up to 25 Mbps with Comcast and have a relatively new / high quality modem and router so I assume this is a hardware problem rather than an internet problem.

 

[Lutfij]

When you speak of mutlitabbed browsing (which may be on Chrome) tends to be quite a memory hog so the first order of business is to buy more ram.

These thread's:
https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkPad-X-Series-Laptops/X301-memory-upgrade/td-p/470227
http://www.crucial.com/usa/en/compatible-upgrade-for/Lenovo/thinkpad-x301-series

state your maximum memory is 8GB DDR3 but you'll need to make sure your ram kit is DDR3 rated to run at 1.5v as opposed to 1.35v. To that end, the link you've found off of Amazon will do you good but buy 2 of them to pair and get 8GB's of ram or you could settle for buying a kit or this one. They should work out of the box though as a prerequisite please make sure your BIOS is up to date.