Refurb T410 coming in tomorrow... Suggestions?

[TexasReb54]

So my mid-2007 black MacBook is beginning to show it's age between it's 2.16GHz Core 2 Duo and it's (maxed out!) 3GB of 667MHz DDR2, and with the prohibitive price tags on new and even new-ish used MacBooks being so high, I bit the bullet on Sunday and purchased a refurb ThinkPad T410 through a Newegg sale from an apparently reputable company (Laptop Experience). It should be arriving tomorrow, and I'd like to hear any suggestions y'all might have to get the most out of the machine. According to Newegg, the specs are as follows: 2.40GHz Intel i5, 2GB DDR3, 250GB HDD, DVD-RW, with Windows 7 Home Premium x64 pre-installed. My current plans are to add a 256GB SSD and a 1TB HDD in the Optical Drive bay, max out the RAM at 8GB, and possibly upgrade it to an i7. Is there anything I'm missing here? I'm a Senior in High School and I'm going to college soon, so I'd like to keep it running as smoothly as possible for the next four years. I have a gaming PC I built for the more hardcore stuff, but I'd like to be able to watch movies, do normal school work, and maybe use Adobe CS6 to a certain degree if I can as well as playing some older games. By older I mean things like the PC remake of Final Fantasy VII and Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver, some old Blizzard games like Warcraft III, StarCraft, and Diablo II, Morrowind, and maybe Team Fortress 2 if I'm lucky. I don't think my expectations are too unreasonable for this machine, especially after I finish upgrading it... Also, any recommendations for productivity software or anything that might be useful for school is appreciated.

[theterminator93]

The T410 should be able to handle any dual-core "Arrandale" i7 with the same TDP as the i5 you're replacing it with (the fastest of which would be the i7-640m). If you got a base system with the Quadro NVS 3100M GPU, it should be plenty adequate to handle handle most games. You can't upgrade to a quad core if you don't have the Quadro graphics since the quad core CPUs don't have the graphics controller; the flip-side of that coin is that the added heat from two additional cores combined with that of the discrete graphics chip will likely be too much for the heatsink to dissipate. Besides, IMHO, most modern applications haven't started taking advantage of parallel execution well enough yet to justify a decrease in single-threaded performance/clock speed in favor of extra cores (except maybe some newer/high end production software for videos or photos).

[TexasReb54]

AFAIK, this is the model with the integrated graphics, but the specifications on refurbished machines are notoriously unreliable, at least with certain companies. If I get more than expected, I'm not complaining, but it will at least meet the specs that I purchased. I was intending to use the i7-640m, and I actually wasn't aware that the nVidia models could handle a quad core, but I don't think I'd need the extra cores anyway. I have my desktop for the heavy lifting and even if the heat was safe for the machine it might make it uncomfortable to use.

[ajkula66]

The only really weak spot of the T410 is the fan/heatsink. I'd be opening up the system, cleaning and re-pasting as soon as I've verified that the machine is OK otherwise.

Enjoy the last 14" 16:10 ThinkPad.

[JohnD.]

You need to get specific RAM modules if you want to up grade to 8 GB.

I used this thread to order the ones that worked with my system. Now I have the Nvidia GPU so I don't know if that makes a difference on what RAM modules you get but it did with mine.

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=45&t=112988

John