Is it worth spending $400 on a A20p upgrade?

[rocketman]

My trusty A20p needs to be upgraded to stay with the times. First the hard drive is going so I would like to replace it with one of the 60gb Hitachi 7200rpm hard drives. Then it needs more memory, I need another 256mb and the battery hardly holds a charge so it has to be replaced. All total it will cost aprox $400 or so for these upgrades.
In your opinion does the law of diminishing returns apply to this upgrade or if it were you would you go ahead with it?

[hausman]

It depends on what you use it for. If it's for general surfing, e-mail and light office applications, etc. then the answer is probably yes, it's worth it. What you propose will likely extend the life of your A20p by another year or two, at which point you should be able to get some or most of that $400 back by selling the unit on eBay.

FWIW, I smashed the LCD on my A21p in January and then spent about $500 to replace it. I'm glad I did because the A21p continues to perform well. (But I also have a P4-2.2GHz desktop for CPU-intensive applications.)

My A21p has also been upgraded to 512MB RAM (the max.) and WinXP. The HD is the original 32GB 5,400 unit that shipped with that model. If the A20p came with a 4,200 rpm HD then you should see a substantial improvement with the faster HD.

[so2]

Is it your only machine? Have you had any problems with it? What do you use it for? Ask youself a bunch of questions, then check eBay to see what the going price is for a comparable machine. You may be able to purchase a newer machine for not much more than the price of the upgrades or buy a newer, more powerful refurb unit from any number of laptop vendors.

I'm asking a similar set of questions regarding my A22e which is behaving badly and shutting down intermittently (bad system board? overheating?) after 3+ years of reliable service and a new Hitachi 30GB hard drive. I checked on a system board replacement for my A22e - $350 if the vendor has it in stock; $750-$850 to order a new one. Ouch. I'd rather put that money to a newer, more powerful machine, preferrably one with a Centrino M like my wife's T40.

I think it is a case of diminishing returns if the machine is losing value on the marketplace and you can spend a bit more to get better performance and more features. My $.02.

Steve

[rocketman]

Well thaIs the rub, I've checked prices on eBay and A20p's go for about $450 to $500. I know I can get a new laptop or a refurbished one for a few hundred dollars more than the cost of the upgrade that will be a lot faster but it won't be an IBM. I love the tank like quality of the Thinkpad and thats why I'm even considering an upgrade like this. I could go for a slower hard drive but the savings won't be that great.