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A bit of history
Back in 2008, when my T42 15" Flexview went out of warranty and started feeling a bit sluggish, and when I realized that T61 and subsequent laptops will not have IPS (in addition to being very bad looking in my view), I decided to get a T60 as the successor to the T42. I wanted a high-end Core 2 Duo model with SXGA+ IPS. I didn't feel like going for T60p because of them still commanding a relative premium, and because I thought that UXGA on a 15" screen might be too much for me, and I didn't want to deal with the extra heat of the V5200/5250 GPUs.
As it was already too late to find anything new, I started hunting for a used one. The 2007-QPG model caught my eye immediately, as it was the best 15" IPS non-p non-customized model that was offered for sale in Israel of the entire lineup. It took me about half a year, and a brief period with a Core Duo 2623-D3U to find someone selling the 2007-QPG, but eventually I secured it.
The original configuration is as follows:
T7200(2GHz), 1GB RAM, 120GB 5400rpm HD, 15in 1400x1050 LCD, 128MB ATI Radeon X1400, CDRW/DVDRW, Intel 802.11abg wireless, Bluetooth/Modem, 1Gb Ethernet, UltraNav, Secure chip, Fingerprint reader, 6c Li-Ion batt, WinVista Business
When I bought the laptop, in spring 2009, the owner had already upgraded the RAM to 2GB, but the rest was stock. It still had almost 1.5 years of warranty left, which I eventually used to replace the LCD (white spots) and the optical drive (stopped reading/writing certain disks). However, for the 5 years I've had this laptop, I only now realized that I haven't upgraded anything internal on it (Cardbus/Expresscard adapters obviously don't count as such). Until yesterday.
Upgrade 1: Hard Drive
In the past ~2 years I've really started feeling that the laptop is slow, slow, even in simple tasks. Slow to boot, slow to open anything. I figured out that the old 5400RPM drive is the likely culprit. I didn't care enough to upgrade, because I have not being using the laptop all that much or for anything all that important. But the opportunity came up recently, when I purchased the X220, which came with a 320GB/7200RPM drive, which I decided to swap for an SSD. Once the SSD arrived, the 320GB drive was going into the T60.
I don't care for reinstalling operating systems, so I bought an Ultrabay SATA adapter to clone the drives. I used Acronis True Image to clone the entire drive, which allowed me to manually resize the two partitions (I didn't quite want them proportional). The process was very simple and friendly.
Contrary to the common suggestion to always put the new (target) drive inside and the old (source) drive externally, I did it the simple opposite way, cloning onto the new drive that was in the Ultrabay. I guess I wanted to see if it works. Well, it did. After completing the clone and swapping the drive, the laptop booted the new drive with no issues. Either the problems apply to USB-connected drives only (the Ultrabay goes directly to the ATA interface), or Acronis software simply does a better job than others cloning things well.
The difference in performance is quite visible. Boot, shutdown, hibernate and resume times are about 1.5-2 times as fast, and the laptop does suddenly feel "snappier" (although it is difficult to measure exactly). CrystalDiskMark shows noticeable differences as well - sequential / 512K access which was showing a measly 20-30MB/s on the old drive, shows 60-80MB/s on the new one. 4K speeds are also up, about 1.5-2 higher, although of course they are still meager compared to what an SSD would provide.
Upgrade 2: Wireless LAN
One other problem I've been having is that the T60 is located pretty far from the wireless router, and the walls are pretty thick concrete. Thus, the 3945ABG, which was never known as the king of Wifi cards, suffered from pretty poor performance, cutting out every once in a while and delivering atrocious speeds copying files over the network.
A few months ago I purchased the Intel Centrino 6200N, with the idea to put it into wife's X61 (to reduce palmrest temps), but that idea was eventually discarded. So I thought - why not use it for the T60?
After flashing the latest 2.27 no-whitelist BIOS from the link in this post (ISO version), I installed the new card (with the extension bracket) and booted. Intel's latest Wifi drivers include support for all their WLAN cards, so it picked it up right away.
I haven't yet done any extensive speed tests, but there seems to be a difference. Comparing to my work T60, which still has the 3945ABG, Inssider's scan shows a signal difference of about 5-10 dB, in favor of the 6200N, in the same location. Windows more often than not reports that it connects at wireless-N speeds (past 54Mbps), which was ofcourse impossible with the 3945ABG.
Overall, nice upgrades, and I hope they will provide a couple of more years of useful life to this old chap. Hopefully it won't suffer any untimely demise due to other factors (*knock on wood*)
Thanks for reading!
