Thinkpads Forum

Hi, I am a newbie here so a big hello to everyone !

Just a couple of questions for the 600E gurus out there really!

You can see my ThinkPad specs from my footer, and I know I will be shot at (if not before!) dawn for suggesting this, but XP Professional seems to run acceptably well on just 96MB of RAM!

Could the fast spin Toshiba hard disk be responsible for this, and if I moved upto say 288MB would I notice a big difference in speed?

I am aware that you can have upto 544MB in this laptop, as long as you use 16-chip low density memory. Is this correct?

Thanks in advance!

If you think your computer is running fast now with the good hard drive and 96mb RAM, try it with 160 or 288mb. My 600E with 288mb RAM and a 5400rpm hard drive feels like it could outrun most Pentium IIIs.

yes 256mb ram will need 8 chips on both sides for this machine. i run xp pro on all of my computers, even one with 128mb of ram. it runs for sure, but it certainly wants more memory. ive got 256+64+32onboard on my 600e, runs quite well- until i compare it to my newer computers. the 2.5mb of vram doesnt help!

Yeah, I really don't know what IBM was smoking when they decided that 2.5mb VRAM would be sufficient for a computer with XGA screen AND DVD player. I find that performance is much better when the display is set to 16-bit color as opposed to 24-bit.

Brilliant, thanks a lot for your help!

I have a HP Pentium M 1.6ghz laptop, and used to have an IBM T21. The T21 whooped its a**, yet cost £200 from eBay, whereas the HP was over £800 (christmas present!)

Even the 600E feels fast compared to it (bearing in mind the HP has 384MB of RAM, the T21 had 160MB and the 600E has 96MB, all on XP Pro)... Think it's time to sell the HP and move to the 600E.

IBM Rules!

And my family moan at me for using a 'dirty old' 600E.... I think it could be the HPs [censored] slow Western Digital hard drive that makes it such a dog. Horrible things (Hp laptops and Wstern Digital!)

I've never used WD's laptop drives though I do find their desktop drives to be some of the best around. As far as laptop drives are concerned, I reccomend from experience Hitachi Travelstars and Fujitsus.

Hey!

samsung drives are good too.

Hi again!

I got a 256MB low density memory card from eBay UK for £23 inc Shipping, which arrived yesterday.

I can confirm this card does work with the 600E, and I now have a grand total of 352MB of RAM (64MB card + 256MB Card + 32MB onboard).

With the fast spin 80GB hard disk, this system is PHENOMENAL! I reccomend any ThinkPad user to grab a 256MB card and watch even Windows XP fly (on a 400MHz P2!)

Thanks for the help!
Mat