Thinkpads Forum

Hi all,

I just got this on fleaBay : W700

It is a type 2758-4SU, upgraded to 8GB RAM and with one of the 160GB drives replaced with a new 120G SSD.

I intend to leave it in my (very small) grad student office at the Uni where it will replace a pre-unibody 15" macbook pro.

I have a 14" SXGA T60 which I carry around and a very fast desktop at home for real heavy lifting.

I bought the luggable mainly for the screen space and large RAM.

Now on with the questions :

1) There is a Turbo Memory module installed. I understand this was borderline useless with the Original Raid-0 config and might even be detrimental with an SSD. Should I remove it or can it be safely disabled in BIOS?

2) Is there something else interesting that can plug in the Turbo-memory slot?

3) I have the following 2.5" SATA drives, of which I should select 2 for the W700 and 1 for the T60, what combinations would you make? I'd like to keep one of the SSDs for the desktop machine too

- Intel 320 series 160GB SSD
- Crucial M4 64G SSD
- Patriot Pyro 120GB SSD
- 750GB Seagate Momentus XT Hybrid
- 320GB Samsung Spinpoint M7 5400 rpm
- 250GB WD Caviar Blue 5400RPM
- 160GB 7200RPM (from W700)
- 100GB 5400RPM (from T60)

The momentus XT was bought as a compromise solution for the single-bay MBP. I don't really need that much storage and might resell it (it was expensive).

Thanks for any input!

Simon

I'm surprised that whoever installed the SSD in the W700 didn't remove the turbo memory. Yes you'll probably want to remove it. Turbo memory was sort of a stopgap measure between hard drives and SSDs. It will cause a lot of extra activity for the SSD.

My understanding is that Windows 7 has better support for SSDs (including support for TRIM) than Vista, which is what's currently installed on your W700. But I also know that people have had lots of problems with video drivers for the W700 under Windows 7. You'll see posts here from someone named proaudioguy who was tortured by them right up to his most recent post in this forum. It was a known problem with Nvidia drivers under Windows 7 within a family of GPUs, for machines from a wide range of manufacturers. It had to do with Nvidia's Powermizer feature, and frequent shifting of the GPU between different clock rates, causing latency spikes in the machine, stuttering in audio, etc. I don't know what the latest state of that problem is, but here's a message that provides some relevant links. Also, you have the lesser of the two available GPUs for that machine, so maybe its lower power levels will reduce the impact of that problem. Note that the W701 is based on an entirely different Intel chipset, and has an entirely different display, so it's a fairly different machine than the W700 (but had its own video driver problems under Windows 7).

Don't run a screensaver on the W700, BTW. It has dual CCFL backlights in the display, and all a screensaver will do is age them, making them dimmer. Click here for more info.

You may need to upgrade the W700's BIOS if you make a transition to Windows 7. If you upgrade the BIOS in any of these machines, do it from a CD vs. doing it from within Windows. A lot of people have bricked various computers doing it from Windows, and that damage is not covered under warranty, if you even have any warranties left on those machines.

Chatbox knows more about the Momentus XT drive under Windows, as she had one and had lots of problems with it, as I recall. I don't know whether they've finally fixed its firmware. Look for her posts about it over at lenovo.com.

A guy here named tinkererguy tried to do things with the slot in which the turbo memory was installed, as I recall. Look up his name with "turbo" here, and you should be able to find his posts. I'm sure others have tried to do the same. In fact, a lot of what you will try to do to that machine was probably already done by him, so peruse his posts in general.

In general, you'll find answers to just about any question you have about those machines, by searching these forums, and the forums at lenovo.com.

That's about all I can tell you. Good luck!

As for the SSDs:

How much space will you need on either machine? Sure, you can clone drives quickly, but that's a hassle to do.

Personally, I'd put the M4 and that 320GB SpinPoint in the W700, toss the Intel 320 in the T60, and use the Pyro for your desktop.

The Pyro is the fastest of the 3 drives; so it makes sense to put it where that speed will be maximized (even if your desktop only has SATA II).
The T60 that you have should take the slowest drive you have, as it only runs at SATA I speeds (150MB/s), which in this case is the Intel 320.
If you only need 64GB of data on that system, use the M4, but otherwise use the 320.

The W700, on the other hand, will be faster with the same drive. But I'd use the M4 there because you have space for a second hard drive (use the M7).

@ Q-Ball : Thanks for the reply, I think you're right! I'll use that setup and sell the Momentus XT back. The desktop has SATA-3 so the Pyro should fly. I certainly wouldn't call the intel 320 "slow", but it's still probably as fast as its gonna get for the T60.

Thanks Qfoam for your detailed reply. I have perused the website in your sig extensively, great starting point for a new W700 user.

As an electronics/computer engineer, my graphics needs are very modest. As long as it works OK and the driver is decent, the FX2700M should be more than enough.

I have access to XP64, Vista64 and 7/64 from MSDN academic Alliance at no cost to me, so I'll use whatever works best.

I never used screensavers, always thought them wasteful. It's always been blank/turn off the monitor when not in use for me.
Do the W700 CCFLs age particularly fast or was that remark just in general?

One thing I noticed with CCFLs over the years (this will be my 13th laptop), is that they not only dim when aging but they turn yellower too but I was wondering if the built-in calibrator in the W700 might compensate for that, and so allow the screen to maintain good colors longer even though the maximum brightness goes down.

Avoid XP64, it doesn't have the driver support that you need on the W700. I know experienced W700 users who have tried it, and it was bad news.

The dual CCFL backlights on the W700 don't wear out any faster than any others, but if someone used a screensaver on that machine 24 hours a day for a year or two before you bought it, then it could be a problem. It's a 400nit display, versus the 270nit or so displays ThinkPads come with nowadays, so it has some brightness to spare. The brightness does decrease with age, and the backlight's color does shift slightly as it gets older, but that's what the color calibrator is for and it does take care of it. It will ask you to do the calibration upon startup, but it's better to wait after a half hour of using the machine to run calibration, for better accuracy (CCFL backlights need time to fully warm up, vs. LED backlights). The calibrator works very well on that machine, better out of the box than on the later-generation ThinkPads having RGB-LED-backlights (but Chatbox and zsero have made progress on that in another thread here).

The link regarding screensavers, in my message above, describes how to turn off the W700's screen completely while the machine is still running, if you have any problems doing so.

Also, I recommend buying a "FlexUSB Adapter" (made by Cablestogo) for the W700, which you can find on Amazon among other places. You plug it into one of the USB ports, and then you plug USB devices in and out of the adapter. It saves you from wearing out USB ports, which I've done on other laptops, plus it flexes to prevent motherboard/USB-device damage should a USB device or cable get caught on something (just don't leave it plugged in if you put the laptop in a case!). It's a particularly good idea on a used laptop. I've got them for all of my laptops.

Good luck!

I missed the mailman today (Isn't free next-day shipping just awesome?)

I was wondering if it is possible to remove the useless (to me anyway) smart card reader and get back expresscard 54 functionnality or if it's a permanent factory setup?

I intend to give the machine a thorough cleanup when I open it to remove the Turbo-memory card. Is there anything I should be particularly mindful of?

I run three W700s, all with Win7 Pro. Comments:

* Yes, I'd suggest you upgrade to Win7 Pro.

* No, I'd suggest you do not upgrade the bios, UNTIL you determine that the current load won't work. No sense risking bricking the laptop, until absolutely necessary.

* Dump the turbo memory, as mentioned above.

* 8G memory is good and is the max for these boxes.

* I've run three different SSDs in these and just about any SSD will work great. Kingspec, Samsung, Intel are what I've used. Kingspec is lower grade, but the Samsung and Intel are no problem type SSDs.

* So, SSD for boot, and add in a cheap high capacity conventional HD into either the 2nd HD slot or into the ultrabay via caddy.

* The lower left corner of the laptop contains the 'reader' slots. This could be a smart card/ExpressCard combo or a two ExpressCard combo unit was also available. If you want to add the second ExpressCard, you'll need to buy the complete replacement package, which means swapping out your current smart card/Expresscard setup and installing the unit which contains the two ExpressCard slots. So, no swap on just the smart card reader. I bought a two ExpressCard unit for $150-ish, but never got around to using it, so I can't tell you how hard it is to swap 'em out. If you have some laptop experience, probably not a biggie. Fwiw, if you're dying to get one of these, shop around and if you come up empty, hit me up on the side and maybe I'll part with mine.


W700 is a very nice laptop. Best screen(IMO), and LOTS of expandability(THREE hard drives total, if you want ). Only drawbacks are 8G max memory and upper limits on cpu horsepower. I'm going to do a hardware upgrade cuz of cpu consumption, but other than that, these are nice not-so-little laptops.

It appears I had NOT missed the mailman after all!

Which means..... .... NEW LAPTOP !!!!1!!

How is it that even after 15 years and the same number of machines, this NEVER gets old?

First of all, I will have to thank my eBay vendor, I was lucky on the refurb lottery I guess, As the laptop is in pretty good shape, screen is very bright with no dead or stuck pixels, I have a NEW Lenovo branded battery (9 cycles!) and also what appears to be a new 230W power brick (Rev:C. dated 2011.09, very slim design for the size).

First impressions :

- Laptop is large, but not OMG XBOX HUGE! Like the reviewers implied.

- Feels surprisingly light for the size when you pick it up.

- Keyboard is rather weak for a Thinkpad (but this is my first Lenovo so maybe they're all like this nowadays). Still acceptable.

- Battery is much smaller than I expected. But 84Wh is serious juice!

Now off to the deep cleaning, hard disk swapping and OS install.

I will try win7 first as AMATX suggested, as I still don't enjoy Vista very much.

I removed the intel Turbo memory card. It went well. I took some pictures of the insides if anybody is interested.

Quite certain this is factory refurbished now as there was zero dust inside.

Bios was already updated to rev.2.17 dated late 2011, I believe this is the latest and will leave it be.

Put the Crucial 64G and the Samsung 5400k inside, now installing Win7 from USB stick.

Quite happy with my purchase so far!