Reccomendations and tips for a new X40 owner!

[spasticteapot]

After my Compaq Evo NC4010 bit the dust, I decided "@#$@#$ it, I'm buying something good." After passing up an Averatec I could have bought with the store credit I recieved in return for the now-dead Evo, I instead pooled what money I had, called in a favor, and bought an X40 for 650$ + 40$ shipping. (1yr IBM warranty, too!)

Anyway, the laptop is pretty much stock bottom-of-the-line fare: 20gb HDD, 256mb RAM, and the ULV 1ghz Pentium-M. Battery is the 4-cell model; I'll likely get an 8-cell if I have the money. A RAM upgrade is also a necessity; as this will be a secondary machine, 768mb should be enough.

Anyway, does anyone have any tips? Are there any major quirks with the X40 line I should watch for? And does anyone have any reccomendations for compatible RAM?

[seneca]

Congrats on your new lappy!

An 8-cell battery is a biiig plus, and since you have the ULV version av the pentium-m then your batterytime will be quite long

And since you have warranty on it for another year, make a note that you will call ibm support and request a replacement battery (your 4-cell) when your warranty is about to expire. I've done that twice, since I use my batteries very often.

And about the ram... How many memory slots do you have? And that are free? If you have two, then I recommend 1x512mb pc3200 so-dimm. Then you can later upgrade with another stick of ram

The harddrive, you can't do anything about, there aren't any faster 1.8" drives out there. You can get a marginal improvement by buying a bigger drive (something about the seek-time beeing faster).

EDIT: The battery only has a ONE year warranty, regardless of what your laptop has, btw

[spasticteapot]

Congrats on your new lappy!

An 8-cell battery is a biiig plus, and since you have the ULV version av the pentium-m then your batterytime will be quite long

And since you have warranty on it for another year, make a note that you will call ibm support and request a replacement battery (your 4-cell) when your warranty is about to expire. I've done that twice, since I use my batteries very often.

And about the ram... How many memory slots do you have? And that are free? If you have two, then I recommend 1x512mb pc3200 so-dimm. Then you can later upgrade with another stick of ram

The harddrive, you can't do anything about, there aren't any faster 1.8" drives out there. You can get a marginal improvement by buying a bigger drive (something about the seek-time beeing faster).

EDIT: The battery only has a ONE year warranty, regardless of what your laptop has, btw

Yeah, that's one of the reasons I got the 650$ 1-yr-warranty model.

I don't need CPU power, just battery life. I'll likely snag an 8-cell pack if I can find one cheap, but the 4-cell is enough to get me started.

Does'nt the X40 use PC2700?

[pianowizard]

And since you have warranty on it for another year, make a note that you will call ibm support and request a replacement battery (your 4-cell) when your warranty is about to expire. I've done that twice, since I use my batteries very often.

Wow, I didn't know the warranty includes replacing old batteries for free! Are you sure about this?

Regarding the RAM, the OP's X40 has 256MB onboard and one free slot. Brent often has 1GB PC2700 sticks for sale on this forum for around $80 shipped. I would just go get one of those and max it out.

Quirks to watch out for? I have been using my X40 (purchased with 3-year warranty) since last December and have been very happy with it. Some people complain about the slow 4200rpm HDD, but it's fast enough for me. The only problem for me is that even though it has the 4-cell battery and thus is only 2.76 lbs (with 8-cell, it would be around 3.2 lbs), it's still just a tad too heavy to travel with and so I had to get the 2.38-lb Toshiba Portege R100, which also has a much smaller AC adapter and so the difference in weight compared to the X40 is actually quite substantial. So, my X40 is used exclusively at home, to complement my main desktop (Dell Dimension B110) and my T43.

[spasticteapot]

And since you have warranty on it for another year, make a note that you will call ibm support and request a replacement battery (your 4-cell) when your warranty is about to expire. I've done that twice, since I use my batteries very often.

Wow, I didn't know the warranty includes replacing old batteries for free! Are you sure about this?

Regarding the RAM, the OP's X40 has 256MB onboard and one free slot. Brent often has 1GB PC2700 sticks for sale on this forum for around $80 shipped. I would just go get one of those and max it out.

Quirks to watch out for? I have been using my X40 (purchased with 3-year warranty) since last December and have been very happy with it. Some people complain about the slow 4200rpm HDD, but it's fast enough for me. The only problem for me is that even though it has the 4-cell battery and thus is only 2.76 lbs (with 8-cell, it would be around 3.2 lbs), it's still just a tad too heavy to travel with and so I had to get the 2.38-lb Toshiba Portege R100, which also has a much smaller AC adapter and so the difference in weight compared to the X40 is actually quite substantial. So, my X40 is used exclusively at home, to complement my main desktop (Dell Dimension B110) and my T43.

I've tried a laptop with a 10.4" screen, and it gave me a headache.

Someday, I'm going to retrofit that old Libretto 50CT (2.2lbs. with big battery, heavy screen assembly, and more, or about 1lb without 'em) with a cheap head-mounted display and small wireless trackball.

Presto! Instant wearable PC!

[pianowizard]

I've tried a laptop with a 10.4" screen, and it gave me a headache.

My Portege R100 has a 12.1" XGA screen just like the X40. Until recently, it was the world's lightest laptop with such a screen.

[seneca]

Pianowizard: IBM replaces the battery if they find it has been degrading unusually fast within the first year. But I just complained about my need for long battery life and that the battery wore out fast.

[phr]

[censored], it wouldn't have occurred to me to ask for warranty replacement for my x40 battery. After 1 year the ACPI reports it around 60% capacity.

The 8 cell battery runs the unit a lot longer but is awkward, sticking out the back the way it does. I have both and leave the 4 cell on most of the time. My x40 came with the 8 cell and I bought the 4 cell afterwards to make the unit smaller. I use the 8 cell if I'm going to a cafe or something and need long battery runtime with no ac. Most of the time I have ac available and battery power is just if I want to boot up and check something quickly.

You can get lower cost non-OEM batteries on ebay. I don't know if they're good or not.

The x40 uses pc2100 memory and has just one slot, so it's maxed out at 1.25gb (256m internal) unless you have one of the 512mb internal models (max 1.5gb). There are 60gb 1.8" drives available from newegg.com.

I like my x40 a lot but if I were doing it over I'd probably have gotten an x31, which uses a 2.5" drive and has two memory slots.

[pianowizard]

The x40 uses pc2100 memory

Accordind to the tawbook, PC2700. Installing a PC2100 stick would either slow you down or not work.

[faberryman]

Adding more memory should be your first goal. Add an additional 512MB at a minimum. It has both a direct and indirect advantage. The direct advantage is that the computer will operate faster and be more responsive because it will not constantly be swapping the contents of RAM memory to virtual memory (the hard disk) and back. The indirect advantage will be longer battery life for the same reason.

On my X41 Tablet PC with 512MB, just loading Windows and the Tablet specific programs ate up more than 384MB, leaving only 128MB to run applications. It was dog slow until I added another 512MB. Now, it never uses virtual memory and operates much faster as a result. My battery life is longer too.

[spasticteapot]

Adding more memory should be your first goal. Add an additional 512MB at a minimum. It has both a direct and indirect advantage. The direct advantage is that the computer will operate faster and be more responsive because it will not constantly be swapping the contents of RAM memory to virtual memory (the hard disk) and back. The indirect advantage will be longer battery life for the same reason.

On my X41 Tablet PC with 512MB, just loading Windows and the Tablet specific programs ate up more than 384MB, leaving only 128MB to run applications. It was dog slow until I added another 512MB. Now, it never uses virtual memory and operates much faster as a result. My battery life is longer too.

I'm stuffing another gig in this machine as soon as I can, and then installing Mepis.

Any tips on getting the best battery life possible? I'm getting 3+ hours with the screen at minimum brightness and WiFi off (A.K.A "Use your Dell Laptop for more than one class" settings) and I'd like to preserve this.

As a side note: This laptop is awesome. It does'nt have the nasty USB problem of the NC4010, the keyboard is nice, and although it takes some time getting used to the trackpoint, it's great for word processing.

[K0LO]

Any tips on getting the best battery life possible?

Yes, don't install more memory than you need. Each 512 MB of RAM will use about 2 Watts on average. I agree that 512 MB is insufficient for Windows, but if you max out at 1.5 GB you may shorten your battery life more than you want. IMHO, 1 GB is a good compromise.

[spasticteapot]

Any tips on getting the best battery life possible?

Yes, don't install more memory than you need. Each 512 MB of RAM will use about 2 Watts on average. I agree that 512 MB is insufficient for Windows, but if you max out at 1.5 GB you may shorten your battery life more than you want. IMHO, 1 GB is a good compromise.

I'm adding a 1GB module. Considering that the battery pack for this thing is at least 40 watt-hours, an additional 512mb is no big deal.

[asiafish]

Hello,

I'm an X41 owner and have an extra 60GB 1.8" drive for the X4x series. I'm asking $100 shipped in the US, more if shipping overseas.

I also have a lot of other stuff that might be on the market very soon. I have a buyer pending on my X41 outfit and if he falls through, I'll have a total of 5 batteries (one 4-cell, 2 8-cell, ultrabay slim and extended plate battery), two ultrabases, a DVD/CDRW combo drive and a DVD-RW drive. Of course, if that sale falls through, I'll also have the X41 available, which I will offer here or eBay.

Andrew

[K0LO]

Au contraire, if you are getting 3+ hrs (let's call it 3.33 hrs) of battery life with a 40 W-hr battery your power consumption with your current 512 MB of RAM is about 12 Watts [(P = 40 W-hr)/3.33 hr]. The table below shows what will happen to your battery life for other memory sizes.

0.5 GB 12 W 3.33 hrs (3 hrs, 20 min)
1.0 GB 14 W 2.86 hrs (2 hrs, 50 min)
1.5 GB 16 W 2.50 hrs (2 hrs, 30 min)

[spasticteapot]

Au contraire, if you are getting 3+ hrs (let's call it 3.33 hrs) of battery life with a 40 W-hr battery your power consumption with your current 512 MB of RAM is about 12 Watts [(P = 40 W-hr)/3.33 hr]. The table below shows what will happen to your battery life for other memory sizes.

0.5 GB 12 W 3.33 hrs (3 hrs, 20 min)
1.0 GB 14 W 2.86 hrs (2 hrs, 50 min)
1.5 GB 16 W 2.50 hrs (2 hrs, 30 min)

Actually, I seem to be pulling only a bit over 9 watts.

However, adding 1GB of RAM should probbably have a much smaller effect on battery life, especially if I'm running Linux. (Being able to turn off the hard drive is a plus.)

[christopher_wolf]

Waiiiiit a second. Adding 512MB of RAM to an X Series will drop 30 minutes off battery life? Where are you getting those power consumption figures from?

I have never seen an X Series with additional memory do that.

[getlow]

with the addition of more memory wouldn't battery life increase because the hard drive is accessed less often?

[christopher_wolf]

Well, that is a very delicate trade off that can be barely noticed, if at all. More memory technically draws a wee bit more power for some large operations, but I have never noticed it on my T43, or any other Thinkpad I have had, used, or worked on for that matter, whenever I added more memory. The extra power used isn't very much at all and even a different HDD power management and spin down/spool up scheme would make more of a difference.

Also, it isn't just a straight equation, with constants, to get the wattage as there are components that change their consumption very quickly over very short periods of time as well as the power management system; all of which don't exactly contribute to having a nice, linear function for wattage or battery life. You need to integrate over time, including all power consumption of all components and their responses, to get a more accurate number.

[seneca]

Any tips on getting the best battery life possible? I'm getting 3+ hours with the screen at minimum brightness and WiFi off (A.K.A "Use your Dell Laptop for more than one class" settings) and I'd like to preserve this.

With the standard 4-cell battery it's almost impossible to get decent (I need atleast 3h effective worktime with WiFi on) battery time. My 4-cell is a bit worn, but even before I could only get about 1½ hours worth of "work-time" on it. You'll need an 8-cell if you're gonna change that. And then you'll have the 4-cell as a spare (or vice versa) that'll give you an extra 1½h .

And btw, "adding ram reduces you batterytime" is misleading. The gain is to let the hdd spin-down more often (which it often does during word-processing).

[K0LO]

Sorry I couldn't respond quicker, but we're in different time zones.

Chris, you're correct that calculating and/or predicting power consumption is a complicated task because it depends so heavily on your computing habits which are hard to predict.

Micron technologies has written a very detailed article about predicting the power consumption of dynamic RAM here (pdf document). To be specific, I'm basing my 2 W per 512 MB estimate on my own Thinkpad, an X41T. In the Micron article starting on page 19 is a specific example (Example 1) for a 512 MB DIMM of DDR2-533 memory under "moderate usage". The conclusion is on page 20 which estimates 2.7 Watts under these conditions. I got my 2 Watts per 512 MB estimate by rounding down and assuming a little less than "moderate usage" is typical in a laptop.

You can compare this to the power consumed by the hard disk to see how much power is saved by adding additional memory so that the hard disk doesn't have to spin up as often. I'm basing these numbers from my specific hard disk, the 60 GB Hitachi Travelstar CK460 with specifications here.
The stated power consumption is 0.2W/0.4W/1.0W/1.1W/1.4W for low power idle/active idle/read/write/start-up, respectively.

If you assume that with 512 MB Windows has to page often to the hard disk, then you can estimate that the drive is thrashing about fairly often and alternating between writing (at 1.1 W) and active idle (at 0.4 W). If it does this at a 50% duty cycle then the average power consumption is 0.75 Watts.

So compare these numbers. Starting with a base memory of 512 MB, if you add another 512 MB you can save 0.75 W by reducing the hard disk activity but you'll add 2 Watts for the extra RAM for a net increase of 1.25 W.

The conclusion here is that adding memory consumes more power than the amount saved by reducing hard disk activity for my specific hardware; your mileage may vary. But it may be the right thing to do. I personally think that Windows needs more than 512 MB, but the "sweet spot" is at 1 GB and that going to 1.5 GB will have a measurable impact on battery life and hibernation speed. Again though, if you need 1.5 GB for Photoshop or whatever, then go for it.

[tomh009]

Micron technologies has written a very detailed article about predicting the power consumption of dynamic RAM here (pdf document). To be specific, I'm basing my 2 W per 512 MB estimate on my own Thinkpad, an X41T. In the Micron article starting on page 19 is a specific example (Example 1) for a 512 MB DIMM of DDR2-533 memory under "moderate usage". The conclusion is on page 20 which estimates 2.7 Watts under these conditions. I got my 2 Watts per 512 MB estimate by rounding down and assuming a little less than "moderate usage" is typical in a laptop.

Now, that's a DDR2 document. Here is Micron's model for DDR (which is what the X30/X40 series use):
http://download.micron.com/pdf/technotes/ddr/TN4603.pdf

Their examples show a usage of 0.38W per 256 MB under moderate load, and 0.69W under benchmarking-level loads. So that would imply about 1.5W per GB.

However, these calculations are based on a Vcc of 2.5V. Does anyone know whether the memory always runs at full voltage?

[tomh009]

Their examples show a usage of 0.38W per 256 MB under moderate load, and 0.69W under benchmarking-level loads. So that would imply about 1.5W per GB.

However, these calculations are based on a Vcc of 2.5V. Does anyone know whether the memory always runs at full voltage?

Actually, I was wrong -- the calculation example used 2.6V rather than the standard SODIMM 2.5V. Adjusting to 2.5V results in a power consumption of 0.35W per 256 MB or 1.4W per GB.

[spasticteapot]

My laptop's been BSODing a lot; the error message is something along the lines of "could not access .... ". The fan's almost never on, and it seems to be pretty cool.

Should I try installing a CPU monitor, installing Linux, or does it need repairs?

[asiafish]

CHeck you ram first

[spasticteapot]

CHeck you ram first

I have none installed past the built-in 256mb.

Should I get it repaired? It is, after all, a refurb.