Upgrade Questions

[NTL1991]

I have a T41 (2373-4GU) and I want some opinions on what I should upgrade to get it a little bit faster, more storage, and a bit better battery life.

My laptop's specs:

IBM ThinkPad T41 2373-4GU
Intel Pentium M 1.6Ghz (Banias)
1.5 Gigabytes of DDR RAM
40GB Fujitsu MHT2040AH HDD
ATI Radeon 7500 GPU 32MB
DVD-ROM/CD-RW Combo Drive
Bluetooth II Card w/ Modem
IBM Atheros a/b/g Wireless Card

I'm thinking about first upgrading the hard drive to around 120GB. Is 120GB supported for this laptop? Also, I like the WD Scorpio WD1200BEVE drive, Are they any good? Will I have full Active Protection Support with the new hard drive? Also, will cloning the drive with Ghost also copy over the recovery partition?

Secondly, I'm thinking about getting my current 112-cycle-count 6 cell battery recelled at BatteryRefill, I've heard good things about them. What about buying the 9-cell and maybe getting it recelled? Does the extension off the back throw everything off, or is it non-obtrusive?

Thirdly, Would a Processor Upgrade be worth the price of the CPU? If So, What's the fastest processor this laptop can handle with a good price, too? Would I have to upgrade to a long fan for that?

Thanks,
Nick

[Johan]

Nick,

The issue of upgrades has been discussed quite a bit on the forum, and a wealth of very useful advice and experience is available - you may e.g. see the following threads: Pimp my T41p and What is the fastest processor for a T41? and T42 Upgrade Possibilities and New T40 owner, new upgrade race!! - just to name a few! The Search-function works very well to dig up additional info...

First, I would guess that upgrading your old/slow CPU to a faster e.g. 1.7 GHz Dothan (SL7EP) would probably give most "bang for the buck", as SL7EP's can be picked up for around $20-25 on eBay, if you hang around for a while. A 1.8 GHz Dothan would be a bit more powerful (search for SL7EN), but most often goes for at least the double amount (around $50, unless you are really lucky - like a friend the other day was --> here!!). The fastest Dothans (the 2.0 GHz SL7EM and the 2.1 GHz SL7V3) are far too pricey to be worth the money in terms of performance-increase-versus-cost compared to the 1.7 and 1.8 GHz versions, unless you simply NEED super-high speed computing (which I guess you don't, since you stick to the "old" T41").

Second, consider getting a 7200 rpm HDD; they "only" come with up to 100 GB capacity as PATA's. Hitachi seems to be going out of the 2.5" PATA 7200 rpm HDD marked, so your choice is limited to the Seagate Momentus 7200.1 series (unless buying an used Hitachi HDD). Alternatively, you may want to stick to 5400 rpm's; there are reports on this forum claiming that 5400 rpm 250 GB Western Digital PATA HDD's appear faster than 7200 rpm Hitachi; check the thread fastest/largest disk i can get for T42P ? (see the post by awolfe63 of Sat May 24, 2008 3:52 am). The 5400 rpm's are probably slightly less noisy compared to 7200 rpm HDD's, but the latter are actually so low-noise also, that this issue is not of any practical importance unles you are really, really picky about getting a no-noise ThinkPad!

Good luck with the upgrades!

Johan

[AIX]

I upgraded from a 40GB Fujitsu MHT2040AH HDD to a 80GB Seagate Momentus 5400.3 HDD; the last one is faster ( Perpendicular Magnetic Recording technology) and cooler.