W500 with 5GB or 6GB RAM

[B'midbar]

Greetings to the group,

long-time reader, first time caller. I currently have a five month-old T61P, 2.4 GHz T7700 w/4GB of DDR2 RAM and a 128GB Samsung MLC SSD. Rather than spring over $900 for a new 256GB SSD and at least another $500-600 for 8GB RAM I opted to buy a new W500 as, amongst other things, I was after the built-in webcam and a Verizon WWAN card and even after reading about the display quality.

After evaluating the pro's and con's of either upgrading the new machine's 160GB HD to something bigger and/or faster or bump the RAM to 8GB (my primary motivation) I'm opting, for the time being, to buy a single 4GB Corsair DDR3 SODIMM and upgrade the HD to a 7200 RPM, 32MB cache SATA-II hard drive.

My questions:

1) Notebook is coming with Vista Ultimate. As I understand it reading here and elsewhere it's very likely it's going to be a 32-bit version. My current T61P is running Vista Business 64-bit and after a lot of tweaks I've been very pleased with its performance. Anyone have a quick answer as to whether I can go to Ultimate 64-bit or Business 64-bit via the Anytime Upgrade? Looks like maybe MS has discontinued that.

2) Any recommendations on a 500GB, 7200 RPM internal SATA drive? I've been looking at Seagates, both Momentus and Barracuda, but would be interested in any comments on boot/speed comparisons to SSDs, particularly higher models (Samsung) that don't have the jmicron controller.

3) Notebook's memory isn't dual channel or ECC so if I pop in a single 4GB Corsair or Patriot DDR3 SODIMM in addition to what's already there (don't know if the existing 2GB is 1x2GB or 2x1GB) I should be okay, right? I've read about 8GB kits that, for the two sticks, are much cheaper than the cost of two individual sticks, but I haven't been able to locate any on CDW, NewEgg or otherwise.

Just want to make sure I'm not overlooking anything or if there are any better options out there for the dollars I'm looking to spend which, right now, is hopefully less than $500 until 4GB memory and 256GB SSD prices come down.

Any input appreciated in advance.

[Marin85]

Welcome to the forum!

Two points:
1. You can´t put Barracuda in a W500 as it is a 3.5'' drive (you can put only 2.5'' 9.5mm HD in like Seagate 7200.4)
2. W500 is capable of dual channel. Both memory slots should be occupied, memory sticks may differ in size, but not in other specs (like latencies).

[B'midbar]

Thanks for the info,

I went with a Seagate Momentus 7200.4 ST9500420AS - 500GB, 2.5", 7200RPM, 16MB, SATA-300 (http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications ... ER-_-Deals) from Tiger Direct for $129.99 (pretty good, I think) and I'm going to beat up CDW Monday morning on an 8GB kit.

This machine should be a monster.

Welcome to the forum!

Two points:
1. You can´t put Barracuda in a W500 as it is a 3.5'' drive (you can put only 2.5'' 9.5mm HD in like Seagate 7200.4)
2. W500 is capable of dual channel. Both memory slots should be occupied, memory sticks may differ in size, but not in other specs (like latencies).