Thinkpads Forum

I am considering going back to Vista to take advantage of 4 GB RAM. I have 2 GB which I originally ordered with this TP. Am I mad? I wasn't happy with Vista Business Edition and ordered the "XP Downgrade" CD's from Lenovo; the conversion went well (I DID backup my Vista image). However, I would now like to maximize my performance as I am thinking about getting into Digital photo/movie applications.

My question is, What memory SODIMMs should I buy? As an aside, I have a T42 with 2 x 512 MB RAM. Would my 2 x 1GB from the T61 work in the T42, even if at slower speed?

Thanks for input. I appreciate it, and I will continue to search the Forum for relevant information.

Your ram is not backward compatible with your T42 and T61. To find what kind of ram your thinkpads need, you can always go to Crucial.com and input your machine type/model # and it will tell you exactly what you need to know.

Thanks muffd,

The Crucial site has it all. Now I need to decide if I should take my T42 up to 2GB RAM and give it a new, bigger disk!

I think to go to the 4Gb level, you need Vista 64-bit. Vista 32-bit is good to 3Gb IIRC. But unless you were working Vista very hard, the additional memory over 2Gb won't improve your user experience - Vista will be the same as it was from that point of view. ... JDH

I would definitely also go with a larger hard disk. Maybe the 250gb Western Digital right now. I had that in another machine and it worked pretty good.

and I think you'll make it slower with Vista even with 2gb more ram

I'm from the GTA area, and just upgraded to 4GB

Went with OCZ ram at Tiger Direct for $76.99 after mail in rebate cheapest I found anywhere... local

Clint

Thanks for all the info. I'll stick with XP Prof. for time being, and definitely a trip to TigerDirect for hdisk.

I wouldn't go to TigerDirect and go to Newegg instead. Some people here might say TD is okay but I had bad experiences with them. Plus, Newegg has pretty decent prices/service.

I agree that TD is no the best place to deal with but keep in mind we are in CANADA and Newegg we would be facing duty charges and possible brokerage fee's that make dealing with them no that affordable. I found a great deal at macworld on a new HDD and after looking at the prices it was not worth it, after duty it was the same as buying it here local....

FYI

I forgot you were in Canada. I have a friend that owns an Ebay store that I've plugged here a few times and he has pretty decent prices. The only thing though is he mostly sells Samsung drives.

I have that exact model and I'm running Vista X64 with 4GB of Ram.

I really like Vista x64 and contrary to alot of people I find the performance excellent. Vista x64 is alot more stable then XP when you are working with massively huge Illustrator / InDesign files. The memory is better captured back to the OS when closing and opening documents and doesn't have to be rebooted nearly as often.

also I appreciate the extra memory when running Virtual Machines with virtual PC.