"Time Capsule" 390e What would you do to make it a netbook

[ebrettp]

I just got a 390e that was forgotten in storage for years after these people closed a business and hurriedly packed stuff away. It has 128ram, 4.3 gb hhd, it runs xp slowly, I will bump it to 256mb ram, but how else can I mod. it to be essentially a battleship netbook. I just love the real keyboard, it's so nice compared to the stuff today, and it's really almost new, no dust bunnies or stuff like that. Do I get an SSD, is there a way to mod it up with more ram, etc. What's the fastest IDE data rate it will support for a new SSD. I have it running a dlink external wireless card (pcmcia), it does ok, but hangs a lot.

I would like to do it right, and this is the place to ask the question. I'll even go linux, driver issues aside.

Eric

[bill bolton]

What would you do to make it a netbook

Sell it and by a real Netbook.

Cheers,

Bill B.

[virge]

Sell it and by a real Netbook.

That pretty much summarizes it....

More detailed: The 390E will probably (not positive) support up to 512mb of PC100 memory in 2 x 256MB modules (low density). That would run $30-$50. A new hard drive would also help immensely-- you're looking at $30-$40 for a 5400RPM 40GB drive. A SSD of the same size will be $75 and up. All that and you're still stuck with a Pentium II processor which will be a major bottleneck. My 600E is probably similar performance-wise to your 390E. With XP, its much to slow to use comfortably unless you're only word processing and surfing low graphics websites.

I own an X30 (1.0GHz, 1GB memory, 8GB SSD) and an ASUS EeePC 900 (900Mhz Celeron M, 2GB memory, 4GB SSD) and for day to day use they're very similar. The SSD and the XP installation have been tweaked, and now both function perfectly fine for a secondary notebook. I actually like the X30 better because of the trackpoint and keyboard. The EeePC isn't that good for typing and I haven't gotten used to the mouse. Right now its out on semi-permanent loan. The size and price is great though.

[craigmontHunter]

If you don't want to buy a netbook, I would use windows 2000 on it, becasue you will not be running office 2007 or anything like that on it, it is not powerfull eneough. I used the toshiba for a couple of years and the Latitude in my sig recently (drives my mom insane - old computer pieces follow me home) and have found that windows 2000 and office 2000 are a perfect fit, fast eneough even for watching standard def youtube videos - no HD for these systems.

Good luck

[carbon_unit]

Yep, you will get the best results using it if you pump up the memory, get a faster hard drive and run some windows 2000 on it.
It still won't run like a modern netbook but it's the best you can do with that old of a Thinkpad. You need some decent horsepower to run Adobe Flash these days and it is everywhere on the net. Flash shouldn't be such a giant hog but that is a subject for another thread....

[virge]

You need some decent horsepower to run Adobe Flash these days and it is everywhere on the net. Flash shouldn't be such a giant hog but that is a subject for another thread....

If it weren't for Adobe Flash, I wouldn't hardly need to upgrade... my 560X would still be fine.

@ebrettp: If you decide to upgrade your 390E and use that as a "netbook" I would recommend using Firefox with Flashblocker. It allows you to choose whether or not to play Flash on websites. That won't help if you want to watch youtube or hulu, but it will allow for a better browsing experience when you don't want to deal with Flash based advertising.