Thinkpads Forum

can i use this as a small storage partition or is just a ram augmentation

More often than not, these Turbochips fail, and then the whole laptop refuses to boot.
Removing the chip gets it going again, but very few people look at that as the 'sinner'...
In my experience it's a gimmick that occasionally works (at least the 1GB versions).
The 2GB seem to be a bit more reliable, but I personally stay away from them.

It became redundant when I upgraded to an SSD and 8GB of RAM, but I used to throw in a lower-capacity (2-4GB) SD card into the reader slot for ReadyBoost. I think there was a slight improvement (lots of access LED blinks anyhow).