Oldest Thinkpad you'd run Windows 7 on?

[Whitieiii]

What would be the oldest Thinkpad you'd run windows 7 on? For me it would be the T410 since it is my oldest Thinkpad so far... but how about some of early core 2 duo machines or some of the very last pentium 4 machines? What is your oldest Thinkpad with windows 7?

[MisterB]

I wouldn't run it on anything with a processor older than a Core Duo, which would be a T60, R60 or X60. Others have installed it on Pentium M T4X machines but one core, 2gbs of memory and PATA drives do better with Xp. Anything that came with Vista will fly on Windows 7 and have a 64 bit processor. Even 3gbs of RAM is pretty limiting these days.

[Whitieiii]

I wouldn't run it on anything with a processor older than a Core Duo, which would be a T60, R60 or X60. Others have installed it on Pentium M T4X machines but one core, 2gbs of memory and PATA drives do better with Xp. Anything that came with Vista will fly on Windows 7 and have a 64 bit processor. Even 3gbs of RAM is pretty limiting these days.

I kinda scored by getting my T410 for under $100 on ebay... it's my oldest Thinkpad so far... it's kinda a base model but it works...

ya personally myself I wouldn't want less than 4 GB of ram for anything newer than xp.... I have all variants of xp so far on disk except for tablet pc edition

[danikayser84]

I have run Windows 7 on a ThinkPad T23 in the past, ran OK for a Pentium III but I eventually went back to XP on it... currently have 7 on both a ThinkPad A31p and a T42, runs reasonably on both (for T42 however, you must have a Radeon 9600 for proper support of Aero/etc. My T42 is actually triple booting ME, 2000 and 7 on an SSD)

The cutoff is high-end T42 (1.8GHz+ Pentium M) or T43 or T60, at least for me

[theterminator93]

I don't run it on anything older than Pentium M, but in "must do" circumstances I could put it on the A31p (or a G4x) with max RAM and it should run fairly well. At some of my clients who don't have the newer equipment we can get away with 7 on the P4 machines (though we've pruned out the non HT hardware) as long as they've got 2GB. They will run on 1 but there is a very noticeable performance hit.

[ajkula66]

Comfortably? *61 series and up.

In dire need, the-world-is-ending-right-now-if-I-don't-install-W7-on-this-ThinkPad scenario? T30 or A31/p. Anything older than that might just get me to the point where the end of the world wouldn't seem like a bad option...

[brchan]

Personally, I wouldn't use W7 on anything older than an ATI T60p.

I did try W7 on my near-maxed out T23 just for fun. Responsiveness was actually not as bad as I imagined, but opening up the browser was like watching a slideshow.

[TPFanatic]

Pentium M 533 fsb. They support Vista so 7 is fine on them.

I actually have installed 7 on a T42p, the power management is semi-functional. It's pretty terrible but I like the search feature. Turning off Aero would probably be to my advantage.

[axur-delmeria]

Oldest Thinkpad you'd run Windows 7 on?

As long as it has a dual-core processor, decent clock speed, and at least 3GB of RAM. In other words, T60/R60/X60/Z61 generation and newer (except those having single-core Celerons or dual-cores slower than 1.6 GHz).

Anything less will become an exercise in frustration.

In dire need, the-world-is-ending-right-now-if-I-don't-install-W7-on-this-ThinkPad scenario? T30 or A31/p. Anything older than that might just get me to the point where the end of the world wouldn't seem like a bad option...

[StefanKo]

I had Win7 on my X41. With 1.6GHz Pentium M, 2GB Ram and PATA SSD it ran quite well.
I used it for work though, writing, simple image editing, data analysis, and not for heavy browsing.

[Whitieiii]

Pentium M 533 fsb. They support Vista so 7 is fine on them.

I actually have installed 7 on a T42p, the power management is semi-functional. It's pretty terrible but I like the search feature. Turning off Aero would probably be to my advantage.

I always use windows 7 in classic mode set to best for performance anyways even if the machine is powerful enough for aero and beyond

[TonyJZX]

Realistically its the T61 again.

A unit with the widescreen, 4gb ram and maybe an ssd and a dual band 11n card would do fine under Win7.

As it stands Win7 does not work well with 1,024 x 768 machines and I believe the Intel GFX in the T60 isnt really that good under Win7 (or is the driver supported at all).

I know the T61 Intel or Nvidia gpu has good support.

[dr_st]

I have been using Win7 on an X32. After a lot of voodoo with the graphics driver (the Radeon is not natively supported by Win7), I got all major features to work, but some things do not work as well as on XP. Multiple display support sucks and Win+P does not work, for example. Battery life is lower, probably due to lack of various optimizations.

[MisterB]

Intel Graphics works fine under Windows 7 in a T60. Aero does do better with an ATI T60 but it isn't bad at all with Intel Graphics. That is pretty much the cut off point. Any older and Win 7 will work but Aero will perform poorly and it is better not to use it.

[Unknown_K]

T60/T61.

[kfzhu1229]

My requirements are much lower, so I run Windows 7 on T23 and A30p (with 1GB RAM). On T23 the GPU kinda struggles while A30p's ATI GPU did just fine. Anything below it is ABSOLUTELY unusable!
If you are desperate for a Windows 7 compatible laptop (because you get tired with Windows XP or something), go and try on A30 with 1GB RAM and Pentium III 1ghz or better. It takes 1 minute to boot but after that everything is well within tolerance.
(In fact I am typing this on a A30p with Firefox in Windows 7)
In my opinion, T43/R52 works better in Windows 7 because Windows XP takes a long time to start on these machines (same time as my 600 starting XP).

[Sudevan]

Among the older machines, I have a few T43s and T60s and a couple of T60/61 Frankenpads with Windows 7 on them. In every case, Win 7 was already on these machines when I got them. One or two also had MS Office 2003 or 2007 on them. I have installed Linux Mint 17 or later versions on all of these machines, and Linux is what I prefer to use, so my memory of how Win 7 works on these computers is hazy. But I think it managed to run all right, especially with processors that were faster. The main problem for me with all of the older machines, whether with Windows or Linux OSs, is Youtube. Sometimes a clip on Youtube works fine, while in other situations, the video clip becomes broken up into static frames with occasional movement! I think as the codexes or HTML changes with time, the older machines will stop working with Youtube altogether. I have 600s (600, 600X, etc) that I can get out on the net with (just for the heck of it), using wired ethernet connections to the router and a USB adapter -- I can read websites, but Youtube just slaughters them!

Sudevan

[kfzhu1229]

Don't even talk about the 600 machines, even something like a fully blown A30p/A31p will still struggle with even 360p playback! 720p can only be archived by a fully upgraded ThinkPad T43 or T43p!

[Sudevan]

Quite. As you can see, I have an A31 and an A31p, and with advice and assistance from George (ajkula66), I managed to get older flavors of Linux (Peppermint and or Centos, IIRC) onto them. A bit of a struggle. You're right about video, of course. While these are great machines, they have their limitations when it comes to moving pictures and sound. If there is just music, with a still on the video page that is unchanging, the performance is much better. Also, in addition to 360 and 720p, there's another factor: The larger the screen area taken by the Youtube video clip (there are three options from small screen to half-screen and then full screen ), the more problems there are with seeing fluid movement. It's quite all right, this is something that is completely understandable. But those of us who like retro computing, would like to see how far we can go with these machines as a sort of game -- hence my minor "exploits" with the 600 machines (I think I still have one, maybe a 600E, running Windows 98SE! ). However, we must accept defeat when it comes, with grace and a sporting spirit! To be quite honest, I give the T43s another two or three years before they become almost impossible to use for driving on the highways of the web.

[TonyJZX]

I cant imagine how slow these units are installing the updates.

You can deny updates since a machine this slow wouldnt be a suitable candidate for attack anyway.

I then question why you dont go back to XP or use something like Posready 2009 since you are memory limited anyway.

[Sudevan]

Personally, I don't mind the slow update process. I can let it run and use the other machines I have. Being retired, time is the one thing I have plenty of, so that's not a worry.

I do have XP on some machines. It's OK, but with the various service packs it does take up a fair bit of space. So far, I have found Linux to be preferable to XP and even Win 7, partly because I don't feel I am at the mercy of Microsoft. Witness last year's issues with forcing Win 10 on folks, and the amazingly slow updating for Win 7 these last few months (that seems to be getting a little better now, although the last Win 7 update (on my i7 quad-core Dell XPS 8700) I did in October took nine hours, and accounts of multiple days for updating Win 7 have been mentioned in various fora).

In the end, what matters is how happy you are with a specific system. Linux is not only free, but it does not have a corporate presence or style behind it. It's worth supporting, even if that means slow updates. Just my take, that's all.

Sudevan

[MikalE]

I wouldn't run Win 7 on anything but a dual core machine. A lot have done it on less, but the performance just isn't the same.

[TonyJZX]

I have no issue with Linux but it has a steep learning curve over Windows... so much so I resorted to CLI much more than I thought I would.

However if your habits extend to VNC RDP then you can always use a slow a laptop as you wish and remote into a fast Win7 machine, maybe even a desktop.

[jwjensen356]

I went from XP to W7 on a T40. Had to search around for several drivers and used a USB WiFi thingy but it ran fine.

[kfzhu1229]

Get a Wi-Fi miniPCI card. They are plenty cheap and something like 2200bg from later T4x series work just fine under Windows 7 with Vista driver

[sir_synthsalot]

Core 2 Duo is the oldest I would do.

[kfzhu1229]

I think a Tualatin Pentium III is the oldest I would do.
While a Tualatin Pentium III runs just fine with Windows 7, it is only today's applications/websites that kills it!
A Core 2 Duo would be recommended for today's applications but I am with my Pentium M 780 T43p all the time and I'm fine with that too

[KentT]

For 32 bit variants, Core 2 Duo OK, I'd go Core i3 or better for 64 bit, and 4 GB RAM or more as a better way to fly, meaning T410/T510 being good Windows 7 candidates (I run my Core i5 T410 with 4GB RAM on Zorin Core Linux 12 on it, it flies)

[Whitieiii]

Most of the vista ara machines is what I'd call the oldest machine I'd use with windows 7 especially the core 2 duo machines with 64 bit support.... I don't even bother using a computer with less than 4 GB of ram unless it has xp or older on it

[edik]

I think a Tualatin Pentium III is the oldest I would do.

A very underrated chip... actually faster in practice than the P4-M (as many reviews noted with disbelief).

Suspect the Tualatin was the real pre-cursor to the P-M (and not the P4's..)

I agree, Windows 7 minimumis likely the Tualatin (I ran one for years in a Dell UXGA C810 Workstation Laptop).