16GB DDR3 upgrade vs saving for a new laptop: Only worth it if the upgrade is cheap

If the upgrade costs $20–30 and your laptop is otherwise fine, go ahead—it’ll help with multitasking. But at $50+, stop; DDR3 is dead tech, and your CPU and storage are also bottlenecks. A $500 new laptop will outperform it, so don’t throw good money after bad unless you truly need 16GB for VMs or photo editing.