Keeping my nine year old alive, and SSD recommendation

[shahidt]

Hi folks. What would you recommend as a good SSD upgrade for a T60? I realise it is limited to SATAI, but don't mind buying a SATAIII drive keeping future use in mind. Currently I have the original mechanical one sitting in my ultrabay and a 160 GB OCZ SSD as my main HDD. Thinking of replacing the current SSD with the mechanical and installing Windows 10 on a new (main) SSD.

Is there anything else that I can do to improve the life and performance of my T60? I already have 3 GB RAM and a 128MB ATI graphics card. Will need to replace the keyboard as some of the keys are beginning to get very difficult to type. The speakers have gone kaput, probably from moisture, but the speakers were never loud enough to matter, to begin with. I could barely hear them from a foot away. Fan was replaced recently.

[ac12]

I think Win10 will want/need too much resources to run well on the T60.
Also, and importantly, you likely will not have the T60 drivers for Win10, so you have to make do with generic drivers, which may not work as well.
On my T61, I have stopped at Win7, and I have 6GB of RAM in it. Granted I don't know if you can even buy Win7.
IMHO Win10 on 3GB is going to be slow. You have to really limit the number of open applications, or the system will be swapping to disk a lot. I don't know what the max RAM of the T60 is (maybe 4GB), I would max the RAM.

If you still want to install Win10.
I have a SanDisk, Ultra II, SSD in my desktop and I am happy with it, so far.
I have a 120GB SSD in my T61 as a test, and surprisingly, I still have a lot of free space on the 120GB SSD. But I would put a 250GB drive in it were I to replace/upgrade the SSD.

[brchan]

W7 is the latest Windows OS a T60 can handle properly. Otherwise you run into driver problems, namely no gpu support for the old ATI cards.

Another option is Linux, which with a little tinkering, can be customized for your exact needs and perform quite faster.

[ji2o0k]

I actually have Win10 Pro on my dad's T60...4gb Ram (which is max) and a Samsung 840 pro SSD.

Most drivers installed properly, as brchan mentioned - the ATI X1300 was a bit problematic but I was able to install a driver version using Compatibility mode (will find out the exact driver when I get home).

Everything runs well, I removed the whitelist bios and popped in a Intel N 6205 wifi card (the stock card wasn't playing well).

I think you'd want to also upgrade the stock wifi card (I used a half bracket since the new card was a half pci-e card).

Gluck!

[ArtShapiro]

A word of caution: I have one T60p (not a "regular" T60) which Windows refused to update to Windows 10, as it didn't pass the various prerequisite checks that are the initial stage of the upgrade process. It was an unexpected surprise, as I'd not had any difficulty with any of my other Thinkpads. I've had to leave it on Windows 7, although I suppose 8.1 would probably install OK.

My recollection is that the issue was the video drivers. That might or might not be relevant to your machine, but just be aware that the upgrade isn't necessarily a "gimme".

Art

[zephxiii]

I have three T60s at work running Win10Proon SSD just fine. Also have it on my T61p which has been fine minus the crappy Intel 4965AGN wifi drivers.

[shahidt]

Thanks for the inputs everyone. I have an X1400 ATI graphics card, but don't play games on it and I switch off all the visual effects in the My Computer Performance settings. I have also swapped the WiFi card with an Atheros card. Would it then be ok in my case to upgrade to Windows 10?

I develop browser extensions as well, so I'd need access to Edge, and it will never be available on anything else

[micrex22]

W7 is the latest Windows OS a T60 can handle properly. Otherwise you run into driver problems, namely no gpu support for the old ATI cards.

Technically Vista was the last OS to support the T60 natively. Windows 7 and 10 just happen to still be compatible with Vista drivers.

I actually got Windows 10 x86 running on my T60p just fine quite when the preview first came out (The FireGL chips are easier to get running than the Radeon Mobility / I've also never owned a T60 that didn't have FireGL):
http://thinkpads.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=73&t=118232

You have to disable some of the ATI services though so the CPU doesn't cap out (others have already brought this up and it can easily be searched up).

Lenovo has since fixed the TrackPoint driver to scroll in the 'Metro' interfaces.

[SurrealMustard]

Lenovo has since fixed the TrackPoint driver to scroll in the 'Metro' interfaces.

Yeah, but they hid the driver really well. I'll save you several hours of searching and just tell you that version 18.1.27.30 is the only one that fully works (although some registry adjustments need to be made to get rid of the phantom "gesture areas").

[micrex22]

Lenovo has since fixed the TrackPoint driver to scroll in the 'Metro' interfaces.

Yeah, but they hid the driver really well. I'll save you several hours of searching and just tell you that version 18.1.27.30 is the only one that fully works (although some registry adjustments need to be made to get rid of the phantom "gesture areas").

The latest Windows 10 UltraNav drivers (which include TrackPoint functionality, the discreet 'TrackPoint' driver is only needed if you disconnect the UltraNav) worked completely fine for me. The only time I had issues was when I used the stand-alone TrackPoint driver with the touchpad disconnected, in which the device doesn't present itself as UltraNav anymore.

Of course I had to reinstall the UltraNav driver after the Win 10 anniversary update because Windows 10 keeps bricking the drivers!!!! UGH!!!! Horrid. I don't know how people enjoy that. Windows 10 wouldn't be as bad if it wasn't so *aggressive* with its update scheme.

[kfzhu1229]

If one says you have to use generic drivers on T60 one is completely wrong. I have NO driver issues on my T43 with X300 (Intel GMA models will have problems in W10). I am not sure about the x64 W10 though as only the core 2 T6x support it