Thinkpads Forum

Please recommend ram for this machine! It only comes with 512 MB. I'm not doing anything real intense (just internet & MS office 99% of the time).. but 512MB doesn't seem like enough since it comes w/ Vista???

Any RAM out there from a well-known brand should work fine.

For example, Kingston, Corsair, Crucial, Patriot, Mushkin (expensive!) (others will have their own list to recommend).

Just make sure to get a matched pair if you intend to get two sticks.

is there any way i could match the stick that comes in the think pad? then i would only have to buy 1 512 MB stick to get 1 GB instead of 2 512 sticks

You could order the stick from IBM, that will guarantee compatability.

But I suspect that may well cost you up anywhere from 1.5x to 2x the price if you order it from newegg.

Or you could just open it up and see what brand your current one is using (mine was from Samsung), and then shop around for one that's got the same brand, and the same number of chips on it.

I just got the cheapest RAM i could find from newegg and outpost
i got a 2GB stick for 80bucks and a 1GB stick for 30 bucks
IWorks great

iha wrote:Please recommend ram for this machine! It only comes with 512 MB. I'm not doing anything real intense (just internet & MS office 99% of the time).. but 512MB doesn't seem like enough since it comes w/ Vista???

If you plan on keeping the computer for more than a year I would highly suggest you consider 2GB of ram. Vista is very resource intensive and running 1GB is not excessive for the type of work you outline. I would say that it's just barely adequate. No matter what Microsoft lists as system requirements they always indicate far too little ram.

You may find that you enjoy this computer more than you anticipated, decide to keep it longer than you planned, and as Vista applications come out, you will not have enough ram at only 1GB. Therefore if you go with 2GB now, you are future proofing it so that you can install programs in the future that you may not be thinking of now.

Best way is to go to newegg .com and you will find very good pricing. I use them each time I do a ram upgrade to a new computer.

Okay will do. I am planning on keeping this computer for 4 years at least.

But I don't know about new programs though because I prefer working on a desktop as my main computer.

Anyway, I might try it out with just the 512MB of ram for a little while because I have spent a lot of money lately already..

Sitting in my office is a demo X61 tablet that Lenovo sent to my company. It's got 1GB RAM and Vista.

1GB RAM is almost unusable. My desktop, a Celeron 1100 with 384MB RAM running Ubuntu is MUCH faster. My R51e, a Celeron M 1.4 with 768MB RAM and XP (and dual-booting Ubuntu, but it's even more embarassing there) blows its doors off.

512... the thought scares me.

Just got this one before my X61 arrive (within 5 more days). Do you think it has any problem installing this memory?

http://www.ec.kingston.com/ecom/configu ... 667D2S5/2G

That'll work fine.

tomh009,

I understand that you are planning a 1G+2G RAM upgrade for your new X61.

My question to you is this: why are you not concerned about losing the dual channel mode capability? (My problem is that I don't fully understand how it works and its advantages.)

Thanks in advance,
Albert

Yes, I will lose the dual-channel mode. Based on reading various benchmarks, dual channel can provide maybe an 80% improvement in a strict memory benchmark. However, any sort of realistic benchmark will stress the CPU more than memory, and then the difference is in the 5-10% range. And the extra gigabyte will make Vista more than 10% happier.

I do plan to upgrade to 4 GB when I switch to 64-bit, maybe next year. But by then the 2 GB modules will be handed out in breakfast cereal boxes.