Improving the speed of my 600x.

[paul*robertson]

Hi,

I have a pretty standard 600x which i would like to improve the general speed of. That is booting up, opening files and documents, general word processing, surfing the web. Nothing fancy, but at times its painfully slow. Its my "true" laptop that i use on my lap. I have a second "desktop" laptop for everything else.

Win 2K
256 Ram
500 megahertz Intel Pentium III
32 kilobyte primary memory cache
256 kilobyte secondary memory cache Board: IBM 26458EU

IBM-DARA-212000 [Hard drive] (12.07 GB) (original i think)

256 Megabytes Installed Memory
Slot 'DIMM 0 ' has 64 MB
Slot 'DIMM 1 ' has 128 MB
Slot 'DIMM 2 ' has 64 MB

Has anyone any suggestions (simple and cost effective). More ram, faster hard drive etc.
(or should i just get an X-series replacement)

thanks
Paul.

[ssd_thinkpad]

The 600x is really a nice machine and it has the best keyboard ibm build ever! Selling at more than 10.000 $ its quality is no surprise. I'd ask around friends if they have some old memory chips (and maybe hdds which speed you can then just check). I'd only put money into this machine if I would see it as some kind of art. You get a modern x40 including docking with dvd and some warranty for 250 $ where vista should run faster than win 2k on the 600x with your configuration.

[paul*robertson]

So basically increasing the RAM from 256 and a faster harddrive will help ?

[ssd_thinkpad]

This will help you very much in speed. I'd focus on RAM as you can just plug it in and do not have anything more to do. Replacing harddrives and installing a new win 2k will take you much more time. Regarding buying new parts - it is just a question whether it is economically a good idea to invest money into the x600 when it is not because you like this x600 like an oldtimer. First I just would find out which type of RAM your 600x uses and then just ask on the marketplace within this forum or around friends if they have some RAM left for you.

It is also possible that these old windows versions can be tweaked to be faster by making some "windows tweaks". Old computer magazines usually had these "50 tips to improve windows 2000" articles that are not so often seen today as recent computers are that fast.

[paul*robertson]

Max ram 576.

[pkiff]

I'd only put money into this machine if I would see it as some kind of art. You get a modern x40 including docking with dvd and some warranty for 250 $

Probably good advice. So taking that as a starting point, you might also investigate tweaking your "services" - the various things that are running in the background. Making these changes is free, so that's the best bang for your buck. I've used BlackViper's list of services for XP, and I've found it to produce a noticeable improvement in boot up times and in response times on my 600X's. He also has a set of services recommendations for Win 2000 that I've not tried:
http://www.blackviper.com/WIN2K/servicecfg.htm

My guess is that you would see a greater performance increase by replacing your hard drive than adding more memory, but that probably depends on what you do with your laptop. In general, though, Win 2000 should not be slowed down when running on 256MB unless you are doing memory intensive work. This is in contrast to XP, which really does like to have more than 256 just to get out of the gate and do standard things. I found a significant speed increase when I went from various 8GB/12GB/14GB drives up to 40GB+ drives, and especially with the 7600rpm drives. I found that there was not much difference in perceived speed between a 40GB 7600rpm drive and an 80GB 5400rpm drive on my 600X. I'm now running a 160GB 5400rpm drive in my main 600X, but I still noticed very little practical difference between this new drive and the 60GB 7600rpm drive it replaced. The jump from 12GB 4200rpm up to 40GB+ 7600rpm or 80GB 5400rpm would be quite noticeable, however.

But that would set you back $40-70 + shipping (Never buy a used drive!!), plus the time to reinstall/clone, etc., and it may not be worth all that trouble to you.

Phil.

[CeeBee]

This worked for me! I upgraded my 600X 500MHz running XP Pro/SP3 to:

- 576 MB RAM;
- 120GB Hitachi 5400 rpm drive.

Using Windows Classic Theme, I unticked / removed almost all cute features, sliding menus, you name it, either accessible directly in XP or via TweakUI, which you can download from Microsoft. And .. I set to manual or disabled all services not absolutely necessary. There are numerous articles on the web regarding this so you have to try your way. Finally, I partitioned my HD to have a separate FAT32 drive for my paging file .. which I set to a fixed size (plenty large).

My 600X goes with me around the globe to strange places (I have a 3Com LAN Ethernet, 3Com Wireless Card and a normal modem installed) and is a sturdy .. albeit no speed-demon, friend. And, I run CCleaner frequently to remove "crap" from the registry and the drive. By the way, I cloned my old 12GB drive to a 100GB and later to a 120GB drive by using Acronis True Image Home. Worked for me .. as I said! Have fun...

PS: my 600X is a type 2645-4EU

[paul*robertson]

Thanks for all the advice. I only use my 600x for the net and office, no video.

[paul*robertson]

Hi,

Just to let you know i upgraded the HD to a 5400rpm 40GB and increased the RAM to 448. I think the biggest difference is upgrading the HD (in noise levels as well as speed). I did a before and after read/write test and i'm getting a new read speed of 32mb/sec from 9mb/sec on the old HD. The overall difference in performance is very noticeable.

[Neil]

Hi Paul,

That has been my experience also. People always first recommend upgrading the RAM to increase perceived speed. But, that has never made a perceivable difference to me. Upgrading HDDs has always given a noticeable performance boost for me. YMMV of course.

[u.mac]

I did a before and after read/write test and i'm getting a new read speed of 32mb/sec from 9mb/sec on the old HD. The overall difference in performance is very noticeable.

Did you run the speedtest (which program?) in 600x?

I think, the IDE-bus in 600x is limited to real ~28mb/s (ATAPI-4 theo. max. 33,3mb/s)?! Tested with Samsung 80gb, Samsung 160gb and IDE<->CF-card-adaptor with SanDisk Ducati edition (r/w >40mb/s in other machines)

Uwe.

[paul*robertson]

I didn't. I dont know how.