Thinkpads Forum

I've got an X24 with a fairly new battery.

I find I can use it for 2-3 hours at most on battery, running Windows XP and doing simple word processing.

Would I get noticeably better performance if I upped the RAM from the existing 256 MB (thus presumably reducing disk drive activity)?

I realise that more RAM is always good, but it does the job as it is fine, and I wouldn't spend the money just to get a marginal increase in performance.

I'd say if the goal of increasing your system memory is to obtain a faster running system, then yes, replacing your 128MB module with a 512MB would be one of the things you can do. Certainly it's the easiest. The X24's maximum memory is 640MB; 128MB on board, plus the 512MB in the memory slot. It's been my experience that Windows XP is fairly slow with just 256MB. Going to 384MB or 640MB should help even with word processing. If you are also running an anti-virus and/or anti-spyware programs, along with a browser and a couple of other applications, then increasing the system memory is a good idea.

If you are using a relatively slow hard disk drive (4200rpm), switching to a faster one (5400 or 7200rpm) can also make your system a little bit quicker. This would be more noticeable when starting up programs or if you are running an application which reads or write to the drive a lot. However, you have the problem of either copying the contents of your current drive onto the new one or re-loading the OS and apps.

If your question is more about increasing the run time of your system when using the battery, by adding memory to decrease paging, then it's hard to say without knowing the current specs of the memory module and the hard drive and your operating profile; basically, what programs you are running and how they are being used. It's generally recognized that the most amount of power consumed by the hard drive is when it spins up. This can be just over 1 amp. A typical memory module can easily draw the same amount of power (or more) when it's actively being used (reading or writing data). Your 128MB module probably draws just a little less power than a 512MB module. So that would help you by reducing the number of times Windows has to page; assuming your hard drive has been set to power down as soon as possible. And again, if you are trying to get the longest operating time from your battery, then you should also be looking at your other power management settings (screen brightness, CPU speed).

I should have clarified: by "performance" I mean just how many hours I can work.

The work in question is mostly simple text editing. No images, video, audio.

If power consumption is dominated by the processor and screen, obviously more RAM would only make a marginal difference. I assume more RAM means less disk activity, but if that isn't a big power consumer relatively, it won't help much.

The standard battery has 4,000mA.
There are 4,460mA versions available on eBay, which should give a little bit over 4 hours when new.

It appears that there are ultrabay batterries available for select models includind some X series;
I would look in to this as it could extend the amount of time you have between charges.

If I am wrong someone please advise.

T22 4me wrote:It appears that there are ultrabay batteries available for select models including some X series

The X24 doesn't have an Ultrabay.


Otherwise I'll look into a higher capacity battery, but I'm still wondering about RAM.

Does anyone know what the average power drawn by the screen, the CPU, the hard disk is? Then I could assess whether my original idea of more RAM makes sense.

Go to the Windows task manager. Then check to see how much memory is in use. Basically, if you have memory left over, then the computer shouldn't be paging to the disk. I recommend either going back to Windows 2000 or upgrading to 640mb of memory. 256 mbs is simply not enough to do anything but basic word processing and DVD watching.

check out this site:

http://www.batteryvalues.com/ibm-thinkp ... ories.aspx

Would I get noticeably better performance if I upped the RAM from the existing 256 MB (thus presumably reducing disk drive activity)?

If your system is swapping memory to disk, then yes. But you can take your idea further: Mind doing your text file editing under Linux? Increasing RAM then loading the entire OS to RAM will make the harddrive (and it's power consumption) unnecessary. Something like [censored] Small Linux has a very small footprint: http://[censored].org/

There may also be hacked MS Windows alternatives. I recall TinyXP being popular a few years ago.