Inherited 5 Thinkpad A31 and R60 laptops - What to do with R

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Mikhailov · #1 Post by **Mikhailov** » Tue May 21, 2013 12:59 pm

They currently run Windows XP on 512 MB of RAM and can go up to 1GB. Is it cheaper to get 512 cards (one for each slot), or 1GB cards (leaving the second slot empty)? Also, is there a way to wipe the HD and run Google's Chrome OS? I was able to run Chromium open source, but it ran slow. I'm hoping the RAM would help. Is it a better alternative to reinstall Windows XP service pack 2 or earlier? The computers are in pretty decent shape, and technology for teachers is hard to come by so I want to try to breathe new life into them.

Thanks in advance for your help.

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ajkula66 · #2 Post by **ajkula66** » Tue May 21, 2013 3:49 pm

Welcome to the forum!

R60 will take 3GB of RAM (PC2-5300 aka DDR667) and will competently run any OS that you can think of, these are very decent machines. They accept SATA drives natively and are plenty powerful for daily use even now.

A31 will take up to 2GB (PC2100/2700 aka DDR266/333) and is best left with XP. A dated CPU/GPU combo along with PATA hard drives make it somewhat sluggish for most of today's application apart from office-type use.

Mikhailov · #3 Post by **Mikhailov** » Wed May 22, 2013 4:06 am

ajkula66 wrote:Welcome to the forum!

R60 will take 3GB of RAM (PC2-5300 aka DDR667) and will competently run any OS that you can think of, these are very decent machines. They accept SATA drives natively and are plenty powerful for daily use even now.

A31 will take up to 2GB (PC2100/2700 aka DDR266/333) and is best left with XP. A dated CPU/GPU combo along with PATA hard drives make it somewhat sluggish for most of today's application apart from office-type use.

Thank you for getting back to me so quick, and for the welcome.

This is very useful. I didn't know I could push these machines past 1 gig. So theoretically, I can buy a 1GB card and use that with one of the 256 cards still in there?

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ajkula66 · #4 Post by **ajkula66** » Wed May 22, 2013 5:43 am

Mikhailov · #5 Post by **Mikhailov** » Wed May 22, 2013 7:29 am

Ok. Thanks. I'm looking at this model. Looks like it's compatible.

http://goo.gl/trwNv

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Mikhailov · #6 Post by **Mikhailov** » Wed May 22, 2013 7:30 am

Sorry tapatalk posted twice by accident.

ajkula66 · #7 Post by **ajkula66** » Wed May 22, 2013 8:58 am

That will work in A31...a bit on the pricy side for a no-name-brand, though...

Mikhailov · #8 Post by **Mikhailov** » Thu May 23, 2013 6:53 am

Agreed. Ended up buying them anyway for the two day Amazon prime shipping. All told for 4 RAM sticks, two replacement batteries (two of the laptops had the battery removed), and a charger (one of the laptops didn't have a charger), I spent about $150. Hopefully it'll be worth it.

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Saucey · #9 Post by **Saucey** » Thu Sep 12, 2013 10:58 pm

I seem to see that brand when it comes to searching dated ram and I wonder if it is any good.
Might take the same route if I get to pickup an A31p.

#10 Post by **RealBlackStuff** » Fri Sep 13, 2013 4:15 am

That Komputerbay stuff is utter junk.
See e.g. this: http://www.overclock.net/t/999903/kompu ... t_13620060
And I believe him!
Their crap is on the same level as these other junkyards: MEM-Store, Knight, Smilentango, Sterling, and all those other companies that try to flog RAM on eBay under their own name!
I wouldn't touch that crap with a 10-foot barge pole!

There are plenty of good, name-brand RAM modules around:
Hynix, Elpida, Skill, Patriot, Micron, Mushkin, Crucial, Samsung, Kingston, Axiom, Nanya, to mention but a few...

#11 Post by **schen** » Wed Sep 25, 2013 12:17 pm

Mikhailov wrote:They currently run Windows XP on 512 MB of RAM and can go up to 1GB. Is it cheaper to get 512 cards (one for each slot), or 1GB cards (leaving the second slot empty)? Also, is there a way to wipe the HD and run Google's Chrome OS? I was able to run Chromium open source, but it ran slow. I'm hoping the RAM would help. Is it a better alternative to reinstall Windows XP service pack 2 or earlier? The computers are in pretty decent shape, and technology for teachers is hard to come by so I want to try to breathe new life into them.

Welcome to the club (both the Forum and the old computers in the classroom). My wife and I both teach after a number of years in technology, me in IT and she in consulting. As you can see by my signature, that we have a bit of a budding computer lab started in her classroom. As luck would have it, we've apparently started in about the same place with A31s and '60 series machines. We originally got her going with 3 A31s and a Z61m (functionally pretty much the same as the T60/R60 series).

Our A31s run XPP on 1.5Gb of RAM. I've found that there's not a lot of perceived difference to the user between 1.5 and 2Gb of RAM on that generation of machine so I stretch my dollar a little more by going that route, since 512Mb modules are easy and cheap to come by while 1Gb ones are very pricey. I tend to not use the "no-name" sticks since I've generally found them to be more failure prone, so that's a factor as well.

Luck for me though, I've been able to expand and replace some of the older machines with the x6x generation this summer which has afforded me the ability to move on to Windows 7 on most machines. Even the 2 T43s seem to be able to run that just fine with the 2Gb of DDR2/4200 that's in them. The various "6" generation machines largely run 3Gb since that's all they'll see anyway due to their BIOS limitation.

Hope you have good luck growing your little net as well. Please feel free to contact me directly if you have something related to this. Technology in education is not always the easiest thing to tackle!