Thinkpads Forum

I upgraded from a T42p to a T500 since July 2015. I chose the T500 because, as others pointed out, the 16:10 screen. I also appreciate the classic ultrabay and keyboard. T500 replacement parts and system boards are also incredibly cheap. My laptop is nearing 8 years old and a W500 in my care just kicked the bucket. (some sort of power problem, the power port zaps when an AC adapter is plugged in)

I use my T500 daily for writing, photo editing, and Youtube. I know it can handle Youtube 1080@60FPS but my internet limitations require me to force 1080@30FPS with an extension. At times I use 3D programs and the Radeon 3650 helps for that, as they would otherwise run in compatibility mode with the GMA 4500. I can also play some 3D games with the 3650. The 3650 has zero effect on the browser and adds extra heat so I run with it off when not using 3D.


I have done the following upgrades.


RAM: 4GB to 8GB
This was an important upgrade to me since I use Firefox and it is VERY ram intensive. I ran out often at 4GB, I could not multitask with multiple heavy programs open. Now I leave programs open with seemingly endless RAM to spare. Windows still tends to take more and more RAM over time.


Screen: LG 1680x1050 to Sharp 1920x1200 to LG LP154WU1-TLA2 1920x1200 Glossy
The original LG was the superior OEM screen. Colors were very good and it was also bright. My T42p was UXGA and I wanted to get 1200p back so I upgraded to some Sharp. That screen developed QC problems and also had terrible brightness control. Finally upgraded to a glossy LG 1920x1200 with better colors, best brightness, and 500:1 contrast ratio. It is unusable outdoors but I have newer LED laptops for that. I may do the LED mod sometime. All OEM WUXGA's are quite dim. I may have to buy and install a matte screen again so I can use this outside. No point in charging my 9 cell batteries if I'm not going mobile. Or maybe I will try an antiglare filter?


CPU: P8600 2.4ghz 3MB L2 25W to P9700 2.8ghz 6MB L2 28W
I felt the P8600 was bottlenecking me in some 3D games I like to play and also make Youtube smoother. I upgraded to a P9700 and there is no noticeable improvement in games or browsing, or playing Flash games (death to Flash), except the CPU gets hotter and my TPFC settings have to step up the fan. With the P8600 the CPU never exceeded 75C under load. The P9700 gets up to 80C. Only improvement is it seems to handle videos in VLC better.


Flashed no-whitelist BIOS
I have the T500 that uses the 7V versions so I already had SLIC 2.1. I dug around for a correct no-whitelist BIOS for my T500 and used it to install a 3G WWAN which has been useless. I may install a 4G card in the future. Wireless, I'm currently using an Intel 5300 wireless card and may upgrade to something newer still with 3 antennae in the future. My router is barely N and my ISP is crap so ultimately my internet speed is no better than my T42p's G.


Installed a webcam
Ultimately a stupid thing to do because I never use it.


Future plans:
- Install 4G WWAN.
- Install 3 antenna newer Wifi card.
- LED mod the screen.
- Reinstall Windows because my Win 7 image is slow as mud booting. Maybe upgrade to 10 Pro so I get that sweet Bitlocker drive encryption.
- EGPU


I love my T500 and will probably use it for several more years. I've stopped playing 3D games. Writing, digital art, and videos are my current recreational hobbies. The screen and keyboard are most important to that.

I'm eying the W530 or W541 as possible upgrade paths in my future, so I can add 3D gaming to my life again and never have to deal with browsing lag again. But I really dislike 15.6" so there's reason to predict my next daily driver may be a P70 in 8 years.

TPFanatic wrote: ↑

Tue Jun 06, 2017 9:29 pm

RAM: 4GB to 8GB
This was an important upgrade to me since I use Firefox and it is VERY ram intensive.

You can greatly improve your FF-RAM activities with (free) Firemin.

Sorry for coming to the party so late!

We are here to share with you our very similar experience, that from your software usage profile you may need 16 GB RAM, which I believe your T500 unfortunately does not support.

1. We used very similar software on our X1 Carbon Generation 3 (8 GB RAM, i7-5600U Processor up to 3.20 GHz), HD Graphics 5500 in processor, SSD, and Win7 Pro 64-bit:

2. Our typical use is:
- about 40-50 FireFox tabs open (we purposely did not install Flash), investment advice type webpages.
- e-mail client in background,
- office software
- real time stock charting program that sucks up CPU cycles
- occasional music player

3. For above scenario, RAM usages starts off at 8 GB RAM fully used, and then the RAM Swap File kicks in due to further RAM usage (fragmentation).
Our X1C3 notebook slows down to a crawl when [CTRL]+[PgUp] to scroll across different tabs of our Browser.

4. Since we had no way of upgrading our X1C3 8 GB RAM (soldered into MotherBoard), we had to upgrade to newer model X1C4 (X1 Carbon 4th Generation) for its 16 GB RAM (and for its bigger SSD, but that's another story), also Win7 Pro 64-bit. We reboot our X1C4 once a week, after RAM usage (fragmentation) uses up all 16 GB RAM and starts using Swap File, slowing down the system.

5. As an aside, many webpages nowadays embed video in its webpages with autoplay, further degrading your RAM usage and CPU cycles

In Summary, we are here to share with you our very similar experience, that from your software usage profile you may need 16 GB RAM, which I believe your T500 unfortunately does not support.

[Many thanks for everyone's above tweaks to further minimize RAM footprint especially for FireFox, which we'll try out as well!]

CASPER wrote: ↑

Sat May 27, 2017 1:43 pm

Hello,

I have been using my T500 for 5 years. I like it very much, battery still holds good charge, it`s very tough and has good build qulity, keyboard is superior and I love to type on it. But it is 9 years old now, and I sometimes struggle to do simple tasks as web browsing due to lack of power.
My configuration is:
Intel Core2Duo P8400 2,26 GHz,
Intel GMA 4500MHD graphics,
8 GB dual channel DDR3 memory,
320 GB HDD,
WIN 7 x64.

My typical use is:
- about 30-60 firefox tabs open (some with flash based content),
- e-mail client in background,
- music player,
- gimp software,
- office software,
All of that is open at the same time. Sometimes I use 3D cad software.
The problem is that I cannot even scroll through web pages smoothly enough.

Processor usage is high so I was wondering if replacing CPU would increase singificantly speed of my laptop? Or there is no other way, than switch to newer Thnikpad model?
I currently run without SWAP file, with custom power settings, have optimalized services and applications running in background, no file indexing, so at the software level everything I could, I have done.

I think CPU upgrade could be an easy choice, but I want to have good battery life and low power consumption overall, because I use it very often, combined with greater speed. Is it possible with this machine?

Thank you for all replies.

It is kinda weird, but I don`t have problems with RAM usage, I even turned off PAGE file a while ago, and running without it ever since. Sometimes, when I do some RAM abusing stuff, it`s turned on, but otherwise it`s not. No problems with that. For my usage 8 GB RAM is enough at the moment, and of course 8 GB is max what you can put into T500.
Applied tweaks to FF, installed Firemon, still, even at one tab opened it`s unresponsive, constantly "thinking" while loading website and after a while it works ok. Weird. I think it is time to change browser. Don`t want Chrome, Opera works similar to FF so no. IE - no comments Can you suggest something? Maybe it`s more of a software issue than insufficient computing power?

Also I am very curious about LED mod to T500, does it require deep intereference into hardware?

Maybe you should try FireMIN (browser RAM minimizer) instead of FireMON (firewall monitor)?

I use PaleMoon, a derivative of Firefox, without that bloatware "Australis".
Combine PaleMoon with FireMIN and you be grand!

I mean Firemin, just a typo
Ok, will try then this Palemoon. Is this browser safe to use? I use bank web services and FF was browser of trust for a long time.

EDIT:

Oh man, this feels MUCH better, feels like home right from the start
Can I somehow transfer my bookmarks, history and stored passwords from FF to Pale Moon?

Information for GMA 4500 graphics users:
Firefox developers blocked this gpu, and G43, G45 chipsets, and more.. because of some artefacts. Thus it is not possible to get some Direct2D, D3D 9, D3D 11 functions. Also WebGL2 doesn`t work.
This might slow down rendering of websites.

PaleMoon stores its data here:
C:\Users\YOURNAME\AppData\Roaming\Moonchild Productions\Pale Moon\Profiles\YOUR123.default
FF does similar.
You can probably copy the whole profile over.

More specific for bookmarks:
In Firefox click on Bookmarks -> Show all Bookmarks -> Import and backup -> Export bookmarks to html -> create file

In PaleMoon click on Bookmarks -> Organize Bookmarks -> Import and backup -> Import bookmarks from html and browse to that FF-html

It's so long ago, don't remember how FF did it all.

So I copied whole profile, set up it a bit, works quite nice. Thank you for help.

I noticed something today. After changing browser I still wasn`t capable of playing 1080p 60 fps videos, even though 4500MHD can handle them. Even at 720p processor usage went to 100% on both cores, so there was something wrong. It turned out that youtube (and many other websites) currently run webm, which is much more CPU demanding in comparison to flash which abuses more GPU. Switchback to flash in youtube isn`t possible (at least I didn`t find any option for that), but there is possibility to change it in config so flash will be default. After that 1080p 60 fps plays fine and cpu usage is a bit lower, typically 50-80 %, so we can use computing power better.

Try smtube.org for watching youtube videos. That's what I use on my x60s and x24.

The built-in graphics on the T500 doesn't have decode support for webm. Webm uses VP9 video codec, while the GMA X4500 only has decode support for H.264 and MPEG-2.

jaspen-meyer wrote:Try smtube.org for watching youtube videos. That's what I use on my x60s and x24.

Good to know I wont have to make aome overly complocated program to stream youtube videos. What is the minimum hardware that smtube works with well.

Sent from my SM-G550T using Tapatalk

axur-delmeria wrote: ↑

Thu Jun 15, 2017 12:24 am

The built-in graphics on the T500 doesn't have decode support for webm. Webm uses VP9 video codec, while the GMA X4500 only has decode support for H.264 and MPEG-2.

So that is the reason of very high CPU usage with webm.

jaspen-meyer wrote: ↑

Wed Jun 14, 2017 11:03 pm

Try smtube.org for watching youtube videos. That's what I use on my x60s and x24.

Will try, thanks.

Thanks to the person to notify us about the German Q9100 hack.

Ironically I have an Elitebook with this process... HP 8530, 8Gb, some ssd and its a decent performer w/ a decent 1,920 x 1,200 screen on a 15.6" frame.

I suppose the Q9000 is in the W500 series?

TonyJZX wrote: ↑

Sat Jun 24, 2017 6:17 am

I suppose the Q9000 is in the W500 series?

No. W500 stops at T9900 (3.06 GHz).