Lenovo R60 Upgrades?

[aPanzerIV]

Hello, I've been gone on a long hiatus but since my main laptop died I've been using my R60 a lot again.

I'm running Vista Ultimate on it (boo! I know right?), and at times its a bit slow.

I fell in love with all the features that aren't on any other laptop I've used, again.
Since I have a job I figured why the hell not blow some money on it.

It's current configuration:
Intel Core Duo T2300 @ 1.66Ghz (the slowest possible cpu...)
4Gb DDR2 800Mhz
14.1" 1440x1050 Matte LCD (not sure what better screen options there are)
Intel GMA 950
250Gb WD Blue
Vista Ultimate X86

I looked up the best cpu for this model, the T7600G, which I can hand pick on ebay for under $100. I've heard mixed reveiws on this, some saying it runs hot, etc. I'm going to be overclocking this, so its going to get hot either way.

I read a looooooooooooooooong (3+ years) time ago about someone replacing their T61's fan with a T400 or T410's fan and getting more cfm, also doing a bunch of crazy experiments with the heatsinks themselves. I cannot find that post anymore, but If there's a better heatsink or fan or anything I can put on here to cool it off, I'm doing it.

The GMA 950 sucks, even with modded drivers. I'm replacing the entire board with a ATI x1400 128mb one (heatsink included). Not much to say about that here, might throw a chipset cooler on it if I have one that fits. Will probably overclock it too

I already have 4Gb Ram, I never understood why to have more ram than you need, and I only use about 2gb at maximum, so 4Gb should be fine?

I replaced the origional 1024x768 screen on this when some idiot 12 year old kicked it off the bleachers at school. I enjoy the nice 1440x1050 res matte screen, but it is a bit dim when I use it outside / in a car. Can I convert it to LED or is there a brighter screen?

I recently put a 120Gb Mushkin Chronos SSD into my desktop earlier this year. I didn't find the performance too exhilarating, so I'll probably keep my HDD in this since any SSD I put in this will also be capped by the 3Gb/s bus.

The DVD drive broke when said 12 year old kicked it off the bleachers, never got around to fixing it. A blu-ray would be cool, but I am aware that the DVD drives in this are only IDE, so a DVD-RW will probably have to suffice.

The OS? I'll get around to ordering a Windows 7 Pro COA off ebay. Windows Vista actually ain't too shabby once you get rid of all the crap you don't need.

Basically I want to make this the fastest, coolest Thinkpad R60 on the block, any suggestions?

[RealBlackStuff]

If you plan on overclocking, the X1400 is the worst candidate for that.
It already runs the hottest of all them (T60/R60) without doing anything!
And having it in a 14.1" chassis makes the heat even worse!

Any T60/R60 can use only ~3GB out of the max. 4GB RAM you can fit (hardware limitation).

No chance of a 14.1" LED-screen, but LED-modding seems to be possible, check this: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=114881
SXGA+ is the highest normal res. available in 14.1", but there is also a very dim 14.1" UXGA available from Sharp. Search the T6x forum for posts by xyz.
See also this: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=47884

If you'd update VISTA with all the Service Packs, it is supposed to be about as good as W7, so you could save money there.
Instead of fleabay, contact TuuS here to get a W7 COA from him.

Overall I'd say you'd be better off with a T61/R61 or higher...

[aPanzerIV]

I did not know about the ATI cards heat issue, but a few searches and it appears fixable with copper shims or a better heatsink.

I have Vista updated all the way to SP2 + IE 9, etc. Services I don't use, including as readyboost, and windows search, are disabled.

I found a post like the heatsink experiment one, and it would appear I can use a W500 or T500 heatsink, however the grill in the side of the R60 is smaller than the T60/T500's.

After reading that link on avalible LCD's, I think I may have ended up with the a samsung, because it is sometimes too dim to read indoors if the sun is at certain angles. I will look into seeing about an LED mod.

I will also see about contacting TuuS for a COA, it would have to be very cheap though, seeing how you can get one for around $50.

[ajkula66]

SSD - but not a SandForce-based Mushkin POS - would likely be the most noticeable upgrade in terms of daily performance...T7600G is a waste of money IMO...

[aPanzerIV]

Well, other than not being able to play games, the R60 does everything that I need it to do at the moment, so I think why not just make it my main laptop?

It didn't take too long for me to find this guide (stickied) here on heatsinks and the ati heat fix:
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=114717

So I'll buy a W500 heatsink. I was also thinking of the best board I could shove in it. The T61p comes with a nice graphics card, but I couldn't find any. The NVS140 in the T61 leaves somethings to be desired (reliability much?) so I'll probably be sticking with just the ATI x1400 on a R60 or T60 board.

I did my research on SSD's a long time ago, which is why I bought the Mushkin for my desktop, what's the best price-performance-reliable drive I could put in here today? I hear the Samsung 840 series is good, anything else?

I am also slightly annoyed that the trackpoint will move on its own, quite a bit. I looked it up, and it apparently is just re-calibrating. But mine is doing it, like a lot. It gets annoying as it will do it several times when navigating a single page (about 3-4 minutes). Is it dirty or something?

Update: I bought an SSD. Its a Sandisk Ultra II 120Gb. Sorry but the local pc shop has limited options, unless I want to pay $30+ for shipping to Germany.

It doesn't feel like much of a change unless I'm loading something big like RoR or Garrysmod. Oddly it doesn't even feel as fast as my desktop, which is also limited by Sata II. The read and write speeds are advertised as 550mb/s and 500mb/s respectivly, and my WEI in a fresh install of Windows 7 Pro S1 X86 is now 7.2 for the disk.

I found I could put a LED FFS display in my thinkpad... If it was 15"...
Here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/lenovo/ ... s-t60.html

And here:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/IBM-LENOVO-T60- ... 337697f22e

A bit pricey too, too bad...

[schen]

I did my research on SSD's a long time ago, which is why I bought the Mushkin for my desktop, what's the best price-performance-reliable drive I could put in here today? I hear the Samsung 840 series is good, anything else?

I am also slightly annoyed that the trackpoint will move on its own, quite a bit. I looked it up, and it apparently is just re-calibrating. But mine is doing it, like a lot. It gets annoying as it will do it several times when navigating a single page (about 3-4 minutes). Is it dirty or something?

Update: I bought an SSD. Its a Sandisk Ultra II 120Gb. Sorry but the local pc shop has limited options, unless I want to pay $30+ for shipping to Germany.

It doesn't feel like much of a change unless I'm loading something big like RoR or Garrysmod. Oddly it doesn't even feel as fast as my desktop, which is also limited by Sata II. The read and write speeds are advertised as 550mb/s and 500mb/s respectivly, and my WEI in a fresh install of Windows 7 Pro S1 X86 is now 7.2 for the disk.

I've been through a lot of the same stuff as you have, so I thought I'd weigh in and put in my .02 worth. I used to used Mushkin products almost exclusively and had really good luck with them. Then I had a run of bad luck with a number of their products ranging from several sticks their higher end RAM that were bad, to a failed Chronos boot drive on my workstation desktop. That was all it took, and it was the last Mushkin SSD I ever bought! Subsequently, I've had a bunch of Samsungs (if I don't care about speed), a bunch of Intels (if I'm after reliability) and one lonely Sandisk Ultra 240Gb that's the current in boot drive in the WS.

Kind of the opposite of your experience, I've found the SSDs to all feel really fast, especially on older machines. Therefore, we use older machines that are cheap to buy and benefit quite a lot from having the OS on an SSD. If you look at my sig, every one of those "daily drivers" are on SSDs. Sometimes, those T400/500 can be picked up locally for around $75 and when combined with decent RAM (4Gb or 8Gb) and an SSD, they are more than adequate for our family needs. Even my file server has an SSD for boot drive.

My experience with the "recalibrating" TrackPoint has varied quite a bit from machine to machine. I'll have to say that the R60 that we used to use at my school was one of the worse. It was almost like it had a mind of it's own and was trying to fight me. The current L420 is quite a bit better and my last two personal machines (X301 and X1) have been some of the best, virtually never having an issue with this.

The R60 has a kind of a special place in my heart from having used them for so long at work, and now starting a project to revamp them for use again (see following thread) if you want to follow along on our rather restricted upgrade path: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=115302
Good luck on your upgrade.

[ajkula66]

I found I could put a LED FFS display in my thinkpad... If it was 15"...
Here:http://forum.notebookreview.com/lenovo/ ... s-t60.html

Presuming you could find one at a decent price...no more...

And here:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/IBM-LENOVO-T60- ... 337697f22e

A bit pricey too, too bad...

That one is a regular CCFL-lit panel...

[RealBlackStuff]

Guys, that is NOT a LED-screen, just the second version of a CCFL-screen.
On Notebookreview they also never even mentioned the word LED.

HV150UX1-100 CCFL-Original
HV150UX1-101 CCFL-Follow-up model
HV150UX2-100 LED, requires a modded LCD cable and inverter, as described on my website (see my signature)
These LED screens are rather difficult to find.