Best ways to boost my Z61p?

[_jonte]

New to the forum, so hi all!

Got myself a ~3 yrs old Z61p; love this marvel of engineering, but I'm starting to find it a bit slow. Asking for a few tips and experience of upgrading some of the hardware to prolong the life of the laptop before I have to get a new one. New Thinkpads with high-res screens aren't exactly cheap...

The model I've got is Z61p 0674-KSG with the following specs:
T7200(2GHz), 2GB RAM, 100GB 7200rpm HD, 15.4in 1920x1200 LCD, 256MB ATI FireGL V5200
Got a fresh install of W7, 32-bit, working really nice with Lenovo's latest drivers and utilities.

What I'm thinking about upgrading is
- Install a SSD instead of the HDD. About $100 for a 40-60 GB model. How much would I gain from this?
- Upgrade to 3 or 4 GB of RAM(?). $100 tops, worth the buck?
- I'm suspecting a CPU upgrade is not even worth considering...
- New graphics?

Any other tips?

BTW, not using any "really" demanding apps (no CAD, no gaming, etc), just alot of firefox'ing, plus other similar office/web_connected-like apps. Usually quite a lot of them at the same time. Also the occasional photoshop'ing and similar.

Thanks!
Jonas

[Tasurinchi]

Hi! Welcome to the Forums!

I think the best option is to go for an SSD, Win7 will be noticeable faster. My wife's Z61m has a similar config as yours, I'm using Win7 Prof. with 2.5GB RAM and a new Samsung 320GB and it works fine.

I personally wouldn't touch the CPU, and you won't be able to change the graphics (unless you swap the motherboard from other model). RAM wise, I'm not sure about the P Model, but the "m" from my wife has a chipset limitation of maximum 3GB, but even in the case that your model takes more RAM, the 32bits Win7 will recognize maximum 3.2GB

So the SSD would be IMHO your best bet...

My 0.02 cents...

[AMATX]

I have three Z61p laptops. Started picking these up about 3+ yrs ago...comments:

* great little laptops, not all that well known as Lenovo didn't make 'em all that long before
moving on to the T60 series. Nice for misc stuff; web surfing, light Word/Excel/etc. And,
will accommodate the larger hard drive sizes available today, especially easy through
the ultrabay slot with 2nd hard drive caddy. Also, have firewire + USB + ExpressCard
+ pcmcia, so expandability is still pretty decent.

Upgrades/speed it up:

* if using the stock XP load that came with these, make sure you have 3 or 4 Gig of memory.
XP will max out at 3G, but depending upon how you come across the memory, you may end
up with two 2G sticks, which is ok. Pretty cheap these days, too

* SSD. Can't stress how much of a BIG diff this makes. Night & day rejuvenation. Will amaze
you how much difference it makes; especially w/boot times. Forget high end $SSD$, just get a
cheapie; say, 32G and shove a conventional large hard drive in the ultrabay slot if you need storage.
These units are not going to see substantially faster performance by wasting real money on the
latest/greatest SSD stuff. 95% of benefit is from generic SSD.

* Get an external monitor. Original 15" screens are kinda small and probably starting to fade by now.
Can't use DVI(maybe through a dock, tho), but external monitors usually have VGA output that
works fine w/Z61p.

* Forget cpu/graphics; not worth hassle, time, $$$. Won't matter any.

That's it; memory, SSD, monitor and you'll be all set. I've read reports that these laptops can run Win7 Pro ok, but haven't verified that, as my main box is a W700 and these Z61p XP units are for light usage. If you do go to Win7, go to Pro w/64 bit addressing to allow for 4G ram, and make sure you max out your unit at 4G.

[ajkula66]

AMATX wrote:

If you do go to Win7, go to Pro w/64 bit addressing to allow for 4G ram, and make sure you max out your unit at 4G.

Sorry, but that suggestion does NOT hold water.

The chipset limitation is 3GB regardless of OS used. Therefore, there's nothing to be gained with a 64-bit OS. The last (fourth) gig of RAM will remain "out of reach" although it would be visible in BIOS.

That being said, a 32-bit W7 will run great on that machine, especially with a SSD. If you're staying with XP, you may or may not be happy with an entire SSD experience. I'm one of those who were not.

Happy upgrading.

[underclocker]

Another welcome to the forum!

I can't add much to what's been said, so I'll keep it brief. Here is the list in terms of performance improvement. You already have the motherboard with the top GPU for a Z61 (the ATI V5200), so a GPU upgrade is basically out of the question (I only say 'basically' because it may be possible to desolder the V5200 and replace it with a V5250, but that would border on lunacy - which is not unheard of on this forum!)

1) SSD, preferably with Windows 7 (32-bit or 64-bit, is fine). You don't need an expensive SLC model, even an Intel X25-M G2 is quite fast.

2) 4GB of RAM (currently available in the U.S. via the marketplace of this forum for $30 total!) You can't use the last 1GB, however, due to dual channel memory mode, you will see a performance boost over 3GB.

3) CPU upgrade to either T7400 or T7600. I agree that you won't see much, if any, performance boost plus the cost of these CPUs is still quite high. If you happen across a low cost one, then go for it, otherwise, I'd hold off for now.

[AMATX]

Sorry, but that suggestion does NOT hold water.

The chipset limitation is 3GB regardless of OS used. Therefore, there's nothing to be gained with a 64-bit OS. The last (fourth) gig of RAM will remain "out of reach" although it would be visible in BIOS.

That being said, a 32-bit W7 will run great on that machine, especially with a SSD. If you're staying with XP, you may or may not be happy with an entire SSD experience. I'm one of those who were not.

Happy upgrading.

Yup, you're right; I forgot about that 4G limitation on the Z61 laptops. Been a while since I messed with memory on these, as I'm all set with my XP/3G setup. Any large memory issues I have are met on other, 64 bit, >=4G laptops.

Diff between 3G & 4G on these laptops is less likely to be felt than on a more modern setup. I suppose one could load up a Z61 enough to hose memory, but I doubt it'd happen that much in day to day life.

[RealBlackStuff]

I made that mistake a while ago.
The Z61 is not comparable to the T61/R61/X61 laptops, which can take up to 8GB RAM.
The Z61 belongs fully in the T60/R60/X60 line of Thinkpads, with maximum ~3GB usable RAM.