Any life left in T23?

[XTI]

I have a 1.2 P3 14" sxga+ T23 with 512 mb of ram that has served me well. No dead pixles and the only issue was a 5400 rpm 60 gb hard drive that started to click very loud which IBM promptly replaced. For what I use it for it works well, mostly email and surfing the web with a cable modem. I have a 3.4 ee with an ATI x800xt for playing games so that is not a problem.
My question is this, is it worth upgrading the hard drive to a 7200 rpm and possibly adding 2 gigs of ram and keeping it a few years longer?

Or, should I wait a while longer till the new Thinkpads come out. Any idea when that will be? Hoping they fix the problems with the fan noise and maybe implement the latest chips form Intel and ATI.

[wingman]

If you are only using it to surf the web and for email, then the t23 should serve you for a while. They are great computers!

[sloomy]

As far i know, you can upgrade an IBM T23 only till 1gb...

the pentium m notebooks are lighter, have more battery life and faster than Pentium3 Mobile Notebooks.

You own one of the best IBM T2x Notebook available, but you will feel the differences, if you will buy an IBM T4x Notebook.

sloomy

[Nolonemo]

For what I use it for it works well, mostly email and surfing the web with a cable modem.

For those uses why would you want to spend money upgrading the HD or RAM anyway? I'd think your performance increase would be mimimal from the HD (well, you might shave 15 seconds off your boot time) and virtually none from the RAM, for what you describe.

[ambientscape]

I have a 1.2 P3 14" sxga+ T23 with 512 mb of ram that has served me well. No dead pixles and the only issue was a 5400 rpm 60 gb hard drive that started to click very loud which IBM promptly replaced. For what I use it for it works well, mostly email and surfing the web with a cable modem. I have a 3.4 ee with an ATI x800xt for playing games so that is not a problem.
My question is this, is it worth upgrading the hard drive to a 7200 rpm and possibly adding 2 gigs of ram and keeping it a few years longer?

Or, should I wait a while longer till the new Thinkpads come out. Any idea when that will be? Hoping they fix the problems with the fan noise and maybe implement the latest chips form Intel and ATI.

I would not upgrade it now if I were you and since your usage is not that great....might as well stick to the T23 till it dies one day. You have the best T2x there...with SXGA screen. It's kinda hard to find that kinda' model now.

[slagmi]

Well the HDD upgrade is what, 80 bucks or so, and you can take it with you when you do get a new notebook- Sounds worth it to me!

IMO if you email/surf & that's all the RAM may be a waste of $$. And you can't take that with you -your new notebook won't like PC133.

And- A T23 with a clean load and unnecessary Windows services shut off isn't all that slow...try a side - by - side with at T4x sometime and compare things like boot up speed and pulling up mail and webpages. The T4x is of course faster, but the difference may not be as much as you might expect!

[Toe]

As a T23 owner, I Must say don't upgrade the RAM unless you really want to. I went from 512 to 1024, and the difference wasn't great. (Not like taking a desktop from 512 to 1024) But if you feel the need, and want to spend the cash. Go for it.

-Toe

[Aroc]

I'd do the disk. But you might instead buy a fresh battery or some wireless gear, which might be a better way to spend money. I'd want until just before 144pin PC133 RAM starts to rise in price, before buying 1 or 2GB "just to have it" Right now it's not worth buying the RAM just to have it. Buy computer equipment when you actaully need it. No reason to have more than 512MB for the tasks you mention.

I'd say hold out unless you need the dual core Yonah-M chips (next year at the eariest). But if you don't need that, then by all means stick with your T2x. When Long horn becomes a reality, you can decide if you want to max out your ram to 1 or 2 GB (if it goes up to 2GB) [assuming you already bought the 7200rpm disk] or just simply buy a new machine. But even when longhorn come out, and XP machine will still be fine for the tasks you cite. Even a 98 machine is OK, (security risks aside). Which BTW, if you haven't upgraded to XP yet, that would be worth the bucks. XP sure boots a heckuva lot faster and goes into and out of hibernation a lot faster than Windows 2000. Plus you get all of the extra features. Just turn off the eye candy if you don't want it.

(Control Panel, System applet, Advanced, Performance, Visual Effects, Change from "Adjust for best appearance" to "Adjust for best performance." Click OK twice.)

Aaron

[califas]

I also have a T23 and the main difference between it and a T4X is the screen.
Comparing between the two with both XGA screens the T42 is WAY brighter and has more accurate colors. Performance wise yes the t42 was faster but not worth double the cost.

[Ted_E]

I have a 1.2 P3 14" sxga+ T23 with 512 mb of ram that has served me well. No dead pixles and the only issue was a 5400 rpm 60 gb hard drive that started to click very loud which IBM promptly replaced. For what I use it for it works well, mostly email and surfing the web with a cable modem. I have a 3.4 ee with an ATI x800xt for playing games so that is not a problem.
My question is this, is it worth upgrading the hard drive to a 7200 rpm and possibly adding 2 gigs of ram and keeping it a few years longer?

Or, should I wait a while longer till the new Thinkpads come out. Any idea when that will be? Hoping they fix the problems with the fan noise and maybe implement the latest chips form Intel and ATI.

About 6 months ago I bought a refurb T23 from IBM and have used it as my main computer ever since. I'm not into computer games so that is of no consequence to either of us. I do not run windoze except vaery occasionally, instead I run the eCS 1.2 version of OS/2. I use Mozilla for surfing, etc. and do some pretty heavy math stuff using APL2. I'm also into digital photography, GPS and maps and music.

That said I can't see any reason to upgrade other than the operating system. Windoze is a slug and _very_ resource hungry. I have 512MB RAM and have an on screen indicator of available free memory. I have yet to get into my last 128MB of RAM so more than 512 would do absolutely nothing for me. A really heavy numerical analysis program I wrote took 3 seconds to do a very heavy calculation on arrow flight.

My point is, why would you want to "upgrade"? (Other than the OS, that is.)

"Don't fix it if it ain't broke."

Ted

[XTI]

Thanks for all the great tips. I really like this notebook for what it does it works great. I actually have a stripped down version of win2k3 server running on it which is rock solid. I do like the idea of waiting another year or so for the latest and greatest from IBM like the Yona-M dual core. For now, I will get a 7200 rpm drive and an external hd case so I can back it up to the 5400 drive. This way when it comes time to upgrade to something I just can't refuse I will keep the 7200 drive for my hd case and put the 5400 back in the T23 and sell it.

[Ted_E]

Thanks for all the great tips. I really like this notebook for what it does it works great. I actually have a stripped down version of win2k3 server running on it which is rock solid. I do like the idea of waiting another year or so for the latest and greatest from IBM like the Yona-M dual core. For now, I will get a 7200 rpm drive and an external hd case so I can back it up to the 5400 drive. This way when it comes time to upgrade to something I just can't refuse I will keep the 7200 drive for my hd case and put the 5400 back in the T23 and sell it.

Out of curiosity, what do you do where you feel more performance would be a noticable improvement?

As far as backup is concerned, I got the IBM CD/DVD multiburner plus (73P3312). It goes in the ultrabay and allows me to read or burn CDs and DVDs including RWs. At the price of blanks these days, it is very easy to ZIP up your valuable stuff and save it just in case. I also find it convenient to convert music CD's to MP3 format and save 'em on a DVD. This way I can have my music when I'm not at home.

Regards,
Ted

[XTI]

As far as backup is concerned, I got the IBM CD/DVD multiburner plus (73P3312). It goes in the ultrabay and allows me to read or burn CDs and DVDs including RWs. At the price of blanks these days, it is very easy to ZIP up your valuable stuff and save it just in case. I also find it convenient to convert music CD's to MP3 format and save 'em on a DVD. This way I can have my music when I'm not at home.

Multiburner would be another option. I like using ghost for backup and I could compress the image onto a DVD. Thanks Ted.

[lilserenity]

If I could of had the ATI Radeon 9000 32meg chip I have now in my present laptop (though I am typing this on a T20 at present, not deserted the fold completely and intent on return when richer ) in my old T23 with SXGA+ I would have very definitely kept it.

The laptop I have now, a Dell Latitude D600 isn't all bad, but the ThinkPad has that robustness the Dell doesn't quite have, although technologically it is better than the T23 but that's technological progress for you, not the fault of the T23.

If I were you, I'd actually stick to that T23 as the Tualatin PIIIm chips are really quite kick [censored] chips, if the Pentium-M has made any impression - it's that MHz isn't all that counts and with the P-M being related closer to the PIIIm than the ghastly (IMO) P4m, it stands to reason that the T23 is a very good laptop that as I said if it were not for increasingly slow 32bit depth performance at SXGA+ resolution I would have clung to.

Vicky