T60 upgrade question

[llamov]

Hello all:

As I explained in a previous post I am a new T60 owner. I originally bought a used machine on Ebay for my 64 year old wife who is returning to school after almost 40 years. She has no computer skills, but needs to acquire at least a passing familiarity in order to adapt to college in 2012.

I was so impressed with the quality and feel of her machine that I ordered one for myself! Mine has a T2400 @ 1.83GHz processor. It has 1 Gig of RAM that I will upgrade to 3 Gigs as soon as the 2 G stick arrives in the mail. It also has a 149G hard drive with 136G free. I'm running Windows XP Professional, Service Pack 3.

Here is my question. I can live with the older Core Duo processor since I do nothing that places heavy demands on my system. I would like, however, to upgrade to Windows 7. Would this be a problem with my machine, and, what further upgrades do I need to insure that it will run smoothly?

[Johan]

Welcome to the forum!

... and congratulations with your new ThinkPad!

As to your question about suggested upgrades, I'd certainly suggest to consider replacing your present (old, relatively slow!) mechanical harddrive with a low-power, totally silent, super-fast solid-state drive (SSD)... this upgrade is widely agreed to give you the by far largest performance boost and user satisfaction. See e.g. the threads SSD Upgrade for T60p How-to? Need suggestions and Upgrade the T60 and SSD choice advice for T60 upgrade for more discussion about SSD's. Personally, I am very pleased with Intels 320-series SATA SSD's, and they even come with an industry-leading, impressive five-year warranty! You'll need a 2.5" SATA drive (SATA-I speed will be sufficient, but newer SATA-II and SATA-III drives will probably be cheaper and have better reliability compared to the 1st generation SATA-I drives). Notice that you'll want a drive that support TRIM if you at a later time decide to install Windows 7.

If/when you upgrade to Windows 7 (a good idea as well!), it is also recommended to "max out" your T60 with 3 GB RAM (that's all it can handle, owing to shipset limitations), so get a 1 GB + 2 GB module. My personal preference when it comes to T60 RAM is Crucial; see the thread What brand is good for memory on T60p for more information (specific Crucial part numbers for T60 RAM can be found in this post about the options). Windows 7 will work excellent on your T60, regardless of the CPU being a Core Duo or the newer Core 2 Duo. For actual user experience with Windows 7 on a similar T60, see e.g. the threads Windows 7, 32-bit ATI X1400 driver.

Another, less important upgrade will/would be to get the fastest CD-RW/DVD-RW; see e.g. this post about the options. You most likely won't benefit much "daily-day speed increase" from upgrading your Core Duo T2400 CPU to an e.g. Core 2 Duo T7200 CPU; for more information about this see e.g. the thread T60 CPU upgrade - currently a T2300 CD, can a T5200 C2D work?

Finally... feel free to browse and search this forum for more information about Thinkpad's!

PS:

As I explained in a previous post...

... kindly don't expect us to have all read and remember your previous post(s); make references to it, if need be - thanks. You may also want to keep related questions in the same thread rather than opening multiple, strongly related threads... just a friendly suggestion!

Johan